Breaking the silence: fight against violence and abuse of women Erasmus Project

Project Title

Breaking the silence: fight against violence and abuse of women

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Despite international and national-level legislation, initiatives, and the continuous fight, gender-based violence (GBV) is still a common human rights violation within the European societies and worldwide. Women and girls experience various forms of gender-based violence in a considerable number. The Covid-19 pandemic led to the increase of domestic/intimate partner violence than before. More cases were reported, and it has become crystal clear that more funding, attention and research are needed for financing support services, facilitating cooperation between institutions and for awareness-raising.

The ‘Breaking the silence: fight violence and abuse against women’ was a two-year-long project with a three-month extension (September 2018 – November 2020), co-funded under the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. The project aimed to 1) to share good practices among involved partners, 2) to learn new tools and methodologies 3) to increase awareness on GBV in our societies, and 4) to strengthen alliances at regional, national and international level with entities that are fighting to counteract gender-based violence and abuse. We wanted to expand our knowledge on GBV and learn methodologies and tools so that we are better qualified and equipped to provide education, create projects on GBV, and answer the need of violence victims when they participate in our programmes services.

The project was conducted by a selected consortium of partners working in the field of youth and/or adult non-formal education, and who have various experiences – from minor to being an expert – in combating gender-based violence. Our partnership consisted of five NGOs: Anthropolis Association from Hungary, Asociația de Tineri din Ardeal from Romania, Active Women Association from Poland, Associazione Agrado from Italy and Permacultura Cantabria from Spain. In addition to the project’s core partnership, a range of associated partners were directly contributed to the project by providing quality activities (workshops and field trips) to the mobilities’ participants.

In order to achieve the objectives of the project, we organized two transnational meetings (a Kick-off meeting in Spain, and an online evaluation meeting). We had three participatory meetings between July 2018 and October 2019, which took place in Vinci (Italy), in Sosnowiec (Poland) then in Budapest (Hungary). During these visits, the partner organizations exchanged (shared and learned) good practices, tools already developed and used at each of the partner organizations on the issue of GBV. Also, we had field trips at various regional institutions (1/country: crisis centres, women shelters), where we had a valuable insight as to how the national/regional-level system supports victims of GBV (and victims of other crises). To ensure that project results, i.e. the new tools and methods, are communicated within the partners’ community (employees, volunteers), each partner organized an internal workshop by the end of the project. In addition to the partners’ capacity building, we had a dissemination plan to carry out with the twofold purpose of giving information on our project’s achievement and doing awareness-raising on the issues related to GBV to the broader public through our online community platforms.

Due to the exchange of the broad range of methodologies, tools, knowledge on GBVWG, partner organisations (staff, volunteers) could significantly raise the level of their services: they implemented new practices, tools in their services, they developed/improved their methodologies, approaches with the broadened horizon and knowledge gained on GBV, they had the knowledge needed to approach those victims better potentially involved in our programmes, training, activities, and partners could improve their skills to carry out awareness-raising campaigns and spreading news related to GBV. On a local level, other organisations, professionals acted as multipliers of the project goals. They were involved in the project activities, either they learned tools, practices or provided workshops. Based on this project’s experience, partners have started to initiate and implement new projects in the field of GBV to improve their capacities and equipment further to fight against GBV.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 84231,83 Eur

Project Coordinator

ANTHROPOLIS ANTROPOLOGIAI KOZHASZNUEGYESULET & Country: HU

Project Partners

• ASOCIACION CULTURAL Y MEDIOAMBIENTAL PERMACULTURA CANTABRIA
• ASOCIATIA DE TINERI DIN ARDEAL
• ASSOCIAZIONE AGRADO – APS
• STOWARZYSZENIE AKTYWNE KOBIETY