Life free of violence is a basic human right of all persons
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Focus of activity
Direct Support
Year the initiative began
1999
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Insensitive & Unresponsive Systems
Which of the insights is the primary focus of your work?
Personalize Responsibility
If you believe some other barrier or insight should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Name Your Project
Life free of violence is a basic human right of all persons
Describe Your Idea
Description of Initiative
Our organisation operates at three basic levels to address domestic violence: providing services (crisis intervention; social, psychological and legal counselling; social assistance; individual and group psychotherapy; support groups), advocating women and children´s human rights and changing relevant policies and raising awareness and educating relevant professions. However, our primary focus is providing services in our Crisis Center. As for contribution to ending and preventing domestic violence on idividual level, providing services to survivors of domestic violence helps individual women and their children to live life free of violence, and thus empowers them; our advocacy and education activities contribute to change the perception and attitude of both general and professional public to causes and effects of domestic violence; via cooperation with governmental agencies, on both local and national levels, and lobbying we want to achieve substantial system change with a view to making the government and its relevant institutions take responsibility for creating efficient system of elimination of domestic violence. In addressing the above principle aspects of domestic violence we use human rights approach focusing on the issue of gender inequality and imbalance of power between women and man. Our main beneficiaries are women and children - survivors of domestic violence. Our target groups are general and professional public, governmental institutions and bodies; and other women´s NGOs.
Innovation
From our point of view, the main innovative aspect of our organisation pogramme is the model of our operation and activities at the above three levels - although our organisation is among leading women´s NGOs in the field of advocacy and policy change we remain a grassroot organisation, which means that our main priority has been providing direct support to survivors of domestic violence. Via having everyday contact with women and their children - survivors of domestic violence - we are able to not only identify the specific needs of our clients, but to also use this knowledge in order to point out the main obstacles (general perceptions and attitudes, institutional and policy) and challenges, which we then take to the governmental level in order to achieve policies reflecting the above needs and obstacles. We do so by being a member of the Government Council for Crime Prevention Expert Group - we have contributed to substantial changes in legislation, by organising advocacy activities (the first national campaign, V - Day, Silent Witnesses, etc.) targeting general public, by developing specific training modules for relevant professions taking into consideration specific issues preventing different professional groups from being efficient when adressing domestic violence (high level of tolerance of violence in the culture resulting from historically determined gender stereotypes). Last but not least, our organisation is a member of the European network WAVE (and other international networks) which enables us to emphasize and promote specific context and issues in the area of domestic violence common for the CEE EU member states, which is very important as the situation in the new member states is dramatically different from the focus and priorities in the old EU member states, which often prevents organisations in the new member states from using available resources and initiatives on the EU level. It is a highly progressive and flexible model of operation.
Delivery Model
1. The clients - women can obtain information about our services via our website(www.fenestra.sk) where they can also find our helpline phone number, via special leaflets and brochures we have distributed to the police, social and labour officies, etc.; personal contacts with our other clients; our partner organisations and our media outputs (articles, campaigns, etc.).
2. General public - campaigns and other media outputs, our website, advocacy activities, brochures and informations leaflets.
3. Proffesional public and institutions - educations activities (trainings, conferences, workshops, seminars), our websites (www.fenestra.sk; www.stopvawmonitors.org), information brochures, leaflets and publications, consultations in particular cases via e-mail or telephone, reports.
4. Other NGOs - workshops, trainings, seminars, conferences, joint projects, regular consultations, reports.
Impact:
1.Increased number of clients(from our database and statistical data); changes in profile of clients seeking our services(younger women, identified as victims of violence, etc.)
2.Increased demand for information, training and cooperation on the part of professional public and institutions.
3.Increased interest in the issue on the part of university students (diploma thesis, research, internships).
4. The need of other women´s NGOs in the area providing services to survivors of domestic violence that our organisation builds up into a national umbrella organisation.
Key Operational Partnerships
1. NGOs : cooperation with other Slovak women´s NGOs in building up standardised services, addressing key policies and human rights issues (One-in-Five Women Initiative, Slovak Women´s Lobby). International NGOs : cooperation in dissemination of information and good practices (WAVE, STOPVAW national monitors project).
2. National and local goverments: Government Council for Crime Prevention Expert Group, cooperation in trainig for state institutions representatives, Council of Europe Campaign 2007.
3. Business : international corporations (U.S.Steel, Philip Morris, Tatra banka).
4. Social: exchange of good practise (workshops and trainings for employees of state psychogical counselling centers, health care services, social work and psychological university students).
Financial Model
All our services are free of charge for all our clients.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
5 %
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
Most of our financial resources are project financed, but a part of our budget comes from coorporations, ministry subsidies, 2% of income tax of natural persons and legal entities, individual donations.
As we are non-profit NGO, we cannot generate any profit. As for self- sustainability, we are trying to achieve sustainability via continuous fundraising. At the moment we are lobbying for state participation in financing NGOs in the field of providing services to survivors of domestic violence.
Effectiveness
Our organization employs two social workers, one office manager, one fundraiser, one psychologist. Most of the other work (especially advocacy) is done on voluntary basis.
1. 2 400 women and their children.
2. 500 individuals from different professional groups have participated in our seminars, workshops, trainings and conferences.
First of all, we contributed to a historical change in the Slovak legislation (both criminal and civil law) in 2002 - there are several provisions specificly adressing violence against closely related and dependend persons. We are co-authors of the draft National Action Plan for Combating VAW for 2005 - 2008. We are involved in training of state representatives with a view to creating interdisciplinary intervention teams in different regions of Slovakia.
Via participating in the regional social platform and the police round tables, and advocacy activities the local community´s awareness, attitudes and perceptions have become more sensitive.
How many people have benefited from your program over the last year? Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
1. 500 women and clients
2. 120 individuals from different professional groups have participated in our seminars, workshops, trainings and conferences
The internal evaluation of services has proved extremely efficient as for defining main focus and priorities, and the objectives for future in order to increse the quality and widen the range of
services reflecting the clients´ needs.
From the govermental policies point of view, the cooperation of our organisation with the Gender and Family Policy Unit at the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family, which started last year, has proved very efficient in their state institutions employees training strategy development-they have entered into a long-term cooperation with our organization in the field of education upon the pilot training we carried out in December last year.
Scaling up Strategy
1. To enforce the EU standards for providing services to survivors of violence.
2. To increase geographical availibility of services in Slovakia.
3. Praticipation of government in partially financing the services.
4. Achieving that the government will provide training for state institutions employees in cooperation with women NGOs, as well as achieving that this special education becomes a part of the individual professions school curricula.
5. In cooperation with the relevant ministries and municipalities, to create interdisciplinary teams of professionals with a view to increasing the quality and efficiency of combating domestic violence at local levels.
6. To achieve that NGOs and individual professions (the police, the courts, medical professionals, etc.) collect specific data on different aspects of domestic violence.
7. Capacity building of our organisation (employing 4 new people full/part time, obtaining a larger premises for our office, currently we have an office of 70m2)
Stage of the Initiative
1
Origin of the Initiative
The mothers’ center (1996-1999) was a safe place for women to talk about their lives, so we found out that a lot of them had experienced or were still experiencing violence in relationships with their husbands or partners. Some of us had experienced violence in close relationships as well. We thought it outrageous that in Slovakia it was possible to abuse a woman or a child without having to face any form of punishment and that it was almost impossible to be helped by institutions, which were supposed to provide it. We felt we had to do something to change the situation.
In 1999, self-help groups of women who were abused by their husbands or partners were formed within the mothers’ center. December 1999 is considered the official date of founding the Crisis Center. We started co-operation with a lawyer and two Fenestra employees were doing the counseling work. They worked with the minimum know-how available in literature of that time and they also did not have much experience with that kind of work. In October 2000, other employees joined the team. The self-help groups were transformed into therapy support groups facilitated by a professional psychologist and a social worker. At the same time, the need to work with our clients’ children emerged and gradually, our program for children was being developed. It then became very clear to us that in order to achieve a real change in situation of battered women, the change of existing environment was crucial. We therefore aimed our activities towards raising awareness of both the professional and general public on the issue of violence against women via regional and national campaigns and education. We currently employ five people full-time and co-operate with several external professionals. A great deal of work is done by our volunteers.
This Entry is about (Issues)
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
We have been send and e-mail from our colleagues in WAVE Austria. We have been recomended to you by them. Our main incentive is that we would like other organisations, institutions, potential donors to find out about our organisation.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
1. Financial and capacity - as we are a non profit NGO basically substituting an important social service and we are also involved in policy changing, we find it very difficult to obtain financial resources and build the capacity of our organisation. These are crucial issues for our organisation. As mentioned above as an organisation in a new EU member state, it is very demanding for us to use the EU resources due to completely different situation.
2. Unwillingness of state actors to adress the issue of violence in other than formal ways.
Main Financial Challenges
One of the main challenges is to build up a long-term partnership with a strong corporate partner in order to balance the share of foundation based and private recources in our budget. Another challenge is to respond to call of proposals of big international foundations, which is, due to our current capacity, very difficult. We would need to increase our current annual budget by approx. 90.000,-USD.
Main Partnership Challenges
Implementation of partnerships and relationship management are the two main challenges because we lack experience and our limited capacity limits our ability to enter into such partnership.
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