Victim Violence Educational Network An educational project to improve the ability to assist women victim of violence
This project is based on the needs assessment in partnership countries and in the EU, on our experience in interventions and on the specific experience of the organizations of disabled. In the previous Daphne project related to gender violence at school (Allies – for early violence prevention in preschool), where ACAV was a partner, they underlined some important points:
– if the Institution does not change, a sole training is not enough to create change in the practice
– it is important to train together different stakeholders (as parents and teachers) to build a common vision and attitude towards violence, instead of separate paths
– the use of theatre is effective in mobilizing human resources, creativity, open attitude to the “Other”
– the supervision as essential tool is really appreciated to help stakeholders to introduce new knowledge and skills in their daily work.
Eyes on Four Paws Foundation, Bulgaria has witnessed in its practice not once unreported cases of violence due to lack of trust in institutions and ignorance about own rights. It has specific experience of lobbying for necessary legislative amendments, of running informational campaign among stakeholders, organising trainings and collaborating with other organisations of disabled nationally and internationally. On the basis of its experience in the field and lessons learned it has identified the following needs:
– To prepare contributors to disability-sensitive statistics about violence – still lacking EU wide even in Eurostat statistics.
On these basis, among the many needs identified in the mentioned researches, and based on ours and our partners’ experiences and contexts, we chose to focus on:
1) The need of professionals to be trained in an effective way and also in the aknowledgment of their own stereotypes about gender violence.
2) The need to be helped to apply and keep the education received in the daily institutional routine.
3) The need to mainstream the trainings and make them systematic at the beginning of education and during the professional career.
4) The need to work on common challenges together – the importance to strengthen the cooperation among different professionals and their institutions and foster civic contribution envisaging prevention and reduction of violence and its consequences/ services to rebuild women’s lives as a common good that could be achieved in a cooperative process involving all stakeholders.
5) The need to promote peer to peer education for professionals.
6) The need professionals to be prepared to contribute to disabled-sensitive statistics whose lack is recognized globally and EU-wide.
7) The need to use innovative, experience based, emotional training to avoid intellectualisation/theoretisation of the problem.
