Femicide Emergency on European Level Erasmus Project

Project Title

Femicide Emergency on European Level

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The FEEL (Femicide Emergency on European Level) project set out to provide an answer to the following problems:
1. the need to create an inter-institutional system of cooperation able to accommodate the issue of violence, which exposes each professional to institutional isolation and possible legal consequences.
Both, the lack of an inter-institutional protocol in support of the victims of violence as well as top-down built protocols poorly shared, adversely affect health professionals’ willingness to support women in exposing criminal complaint. Since the exchange and cooperation between the various actors has been recognized as much affecting the change of attitudes, the proposed training course has achieved this goal;
2. the need to change the culture and attitudes of professionals (health care, social inclusion, justice, police, journalism): training courses for professionals, although calibrated for an extended period of time, often does not produce expected changes, especially with regard to the development of more effective system of the victims protection. In fact, the only increase of knowledge and awareness about the phenomenon of violence does not necessarily create more favorable attitudes toward the victims. Such as deep insight can be reached by viewing of what are the victims going through as well as of our own reactions and resistances. The latest are often based on a mix of rational aspects and emotional aspects affecting the perception of this disturbing social phenomenon. For this reason, the courses have dealt with address the emotional aspects and help practitioners to open up the theme that deeply disturbed the conscience and potentially destabilize the working balance.
3. a poor assessment of existing training programs in previous experiences: the training path was developed together with an appropriate assessment system to show the effectiveness in producing changes in the attitudes of professionals,
4. lack of knowledge about possible supports and services that can offer protection with effective precautionary measures. Actions were strengthened and the dissemination of information on all media available to victims of violence was increased;
5. poor declination of existing laws, practices that have no prescriptive value (for example, only a few schools had opportunities to institute training programs on gender issues; similarly, not all hospitals have set up the Pink Code in emergencies.
General objective of the project FEEL was to generate a climate of confidence among institutions, professionals and victims of violence through an innovative vocational training program aiming to increase effective measures to protect women from the risk of violence recurrence and counteract the phenomenon of femicide.

Specific objectives of the project were:
• to validate a multi-actor training model based on participatory and experiential methodologies, equipped by an evaluation system assessing learning outcomes, in particular in terms of attitudinal and behavioral change
• to validate a specific training pathway for the experts charged to address the psychological issue of violence and to produce a report (having a legal value)
• to test the model in the involved cultural contexts
• to produce legislative and operational recommendations to facilitate an appropriate implementation of existing laws.
• to develop an application including a flow chart with a decision tree to support the professionals’ emergency to disclose the cases of violence and encourage violence complaints by victims.

To achieve these objectives, FEE realized the following activities:
1. O1. PARTICIPATORY STATE OF THE ART identifying difficulties and local barriers (social, cultural, psychological), which are opposed to an early start of the anti-violence precautionary measures and a reliable assessment of the risk of recurrence. Stakeholders who enter in touch with the victim of violence will attend this activity.
2. O2. Design of FEEL model, containing:
a. Training programme and teaching metodologies
b. Teaching materials
c. Evaluation system of learning outcomes and impacts
d. Recommendations in support of appropriate implementation of available law
2. Training of Trainers (ToT): 3-day International Workshop to redefine and transfer the contents, guidelines and teaching methodologies
3. O3. Report about the experience of the ToT.
3. Four local Pilot Training for professionals involved in protection of women victims of violence in Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and Czech Republic
4. O4. Evaluation Report of the implementation (Assessment of learning outcomes, assessment of impacts, assessment of the follow-up
5. Four final multiplier events (one for each partner Country) with the participation of local stakeholders to discuss the results of the project and enhance their dissemination more widely.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 299489,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

SPAZIO DONNA ODV & Country: IT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
• HERTIN s.r.o.
• ANIMUS ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION AAF
• Cooperativa Sociale Il Volo