As there were hardly any counselling structures and services in the Balkan countries, the aim of this project was to prepare and professionalize counsellors for working with the target group of women with fewer opportunities. For this purpose, a toolkit was developed with competence assessment tools tailored to the needs of women with fewer opportunities, together with a manual and a curriculum for newly trained and experienced counsellors. These project materials support counsellors as they work and transfer their HOPE project experience to different contexts, which is especially beneficial in Balkan countries. Another achieved aim was to facilitate women with fewer opportunities access to education, training or employment by assessing and evaluating their informal and non-formal competences, and to promote (re)integration into social and economic systems, avoiding negative long-term consequences for themselves and society. Finally, the aim has been to make all developed materials available as OER in all partner languages and in English, so that all interested stakeholders across Europe and worldwide can use the products, even after the end of the project.
The “Report on the gender perspective in the COVID-19 crisis and post-crisis period”, published by the EU Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, emphasizes “the need for retraining and upskilling programmes for women to take account of shifts in the labour market as a consequence of COVID-19“, stating the concern about higher crisis-related job losses in women-dominated professions and the expectation of prolonged recovery times in femaledominated sections compared to male-dominated ones (European Parliament 20.11.2020). The HOPE project addressed these inequalities by focussing on the needs of women with fewer opportunities (women with interrupted employment, with part-time work, those in charge of childcare/caring for others, victims of domestic and gender-based violence, women with low income, single or divorced women with children), who were especially affected by consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, HOPE addressed also the needs of counsellors in helping professions working in four project countries. Particularly those in three Balkan countries where counselling as a profession is not developed and formal education programs for counselling do not exist.