The European Erasmus+ project « ACTIV – Acting & Collaborating to Tackle Intimate Violence » is composed by a Belgian (POUR LA SOLIDARITÉ-PLS -the coordinator-, la Mission locale de Bruxelles Ville), French (FACE), Romanian (Asociatia Touched Romania) and Spanish (CEPS) partners. ACTIV aims at fostering and facilitating the socio-professional (re)integration of women confronted with domestic violence (DV). It will gather various actors likely to intervene on their return-to-work (RTW) path, involve them from the very beginning in the realisation of the project thanks to a collaborative methodology. Those actors will participate to the construction of the tools dedicated to their own improvement, regarding support, orientation and integration of the concerned women. The overall objective is to break down the barriers between too often insulated worlds (that of support and orientation toward socio-professional integration and that of companies) by creating synergies between them. The fight against DV is an issue considered at European level. According to a 2014 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights study, 1 European women in 3 is faced with gender-based violence and over 1 European women in 5 is faced with DV. The European Added Value (EAVA) has estimated that in 2011, the yearly cost of gender violence in the EU amounted to around 228 billion of euros (1,8% of the EU GDP). The Istanbul Convention provides a legal framework to help and support women facing DV. The Convention advocates for an « access to services facilitating their recovery from violence ». According to the Convention, assistance to women must be a comprehensive pathway including all aspects of help, from psychological support to finding a job. However, there is a lack of communication/collaboration between the different actors involved in the socio-professional (re)integration of women confronted with DV. Unemployed women facing DV at home have to overcome a number of obstacles on their RTW path (e.g.: lack of self-esteem, emotional and material instability, difficulty to face complex administrative requests, confiscation of official documents by the perpetrator and restrictions to go out). To overcome them, all the actors involved (support and orientation structures and companies) have to work hand in hand. The ACTIV project has therefore been built to enable this collaboration between actors in order to offer a comprehensive and effective support to women faced with DV on their RTW path. To build this path, the collaboration between European partners with complementary expertise backgrounds and knowledge is necessary and will allow a cross-analysis of the existing gaps and strengths of each country and organisation. It will also serve as a lever to ensure that international actors such as companies can easily get engaged, and guarantee that the results of the project are compatible with the different national contexts, and that future EU initiatives can be built upon them. The ACTIV project will aim at: -Publishing a Guidebook underscoring key milestones of a successful RTW path (IO1): *20 support structures, 20 orientation structures, 20 companies and 20 women confronted to DV involved; *Identification of the limits in the existing supports provided to concerned women but also positive initiatives existing at the UE and national levels that help their socio-professional (re)integration; *Proposition of a framework of indicators that all actors involved in their RTW path could use to get an overall follow up of the concerned women. -Creating a learning toolkit for the structures involved in the RTW path of women confronted with DV (IO2): *Organisation of 4 hackathons (1 in each country, 20 participants in each); *Involvement of women confronted with DV to make them actors for change in order to strengthen their self-confidence and to ensure that the tools developed meet their needs; *Reinforcement of mutual knowledge, in particular with regard to companies, actors newly involved in fighting DV; *Collaborative elaboration of the learning tools ensuring an improvement of the support provided to women confronted to DV on their RTW path. -Producing a white paper addressed to policy makers, companies decision makers and all organisations working on the topic with recommendations to improve support for women on their RTW path (IO3): *Organisation of 4 webinars to consult various stakeholders (1 in each country, 15 participants in each); *Dissemination of the White Paper to 50 decision makers in each country and 50 European decision makers. -Raising the awareness to the challenges of the socio-professional reintegration of women confronted with DV through: *a broad communication and dissemination campaign, including the creation of a website and free access to the project tools; *both national and EU dissemination events; *the strengthening of existing networks and the development of new synergies
We wanted to create simple and accessible tools, free of charge for all the structures involved in the process of returning women to employment after domestic violence. Through these tools, the objectives of the project team were -Improving support for women facing domestic violence, from prevention to socio-professional (re)integration, in 4 European countries (before disseminating the model at European level); -Improvement of mutual knowledge between the structures involved in the RTT of the women concerned (including companies); -Improved synergies and collaboration between public institutions, companies and NGOs to support women facing domestic violence; -Improved effectiveness of companies in providing employment opportunities for women facing domestic violence and in maintaining their jobs; -Improving the recruitment process of these women; -Contribution to the improvement of public and internal policies. The project partners have developed the capacity to collaborate and build tools together on a European scale, which has enriched the practices of each.
Co-funded by the European Erasmus+ programme, the ACTIV project - "Acting and collaborating to combat domestic violence" - has as its main objective the socio-professional (re)integration of women facing domestic violence (DV). According to a study by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, more than one in five European women are confronted with DV. This situation has clearly worsened as a result of the health crisis. Unemployed women facing DV have to overcome a number of obstacles on their way back to work (lack of self-esteem, emotional and material instability, difficulty in dealing with complex administrative demands, confiscation of official documents by the perpetrator and exit restrictions). To overcome them, all the actors involved (support and guidance structures and companies) have to work hand in hand. The ACTIV project was built to enable this collaboration between the different actors involved in the socio-professional (re)integration of women facing DV in order to offer them a global and efficient support in their path back to employment.