EMPOW-AIR - Empowering Women Against Intimate partnership violence in Roma
communities (April 2011 - march 2013)

The project takes place with the support of the European Commission’s Daphne III Programme to combat violence against children, young people and women (2007 - 2013)

EMPOW-AIR is a project aiming at doing research on male violence against women in intimate parterships within ethnic minority communities in order to create tools to help professionals in dealing with gender violence detection and prevention. Additionally, EMPOW-AIR intends to promote empowerment of women from ethnic minorities to tackle gender violence situations and raise awareness amon professionals, ethnic minority communities and decision-makers,

The whole project will include research and action at different levels:
- Qualitative research on women from ethnic minorities
- Capacity-building activities with profesionals
- Raise awareness and prevention activities within the ethnic minorties communities
- Empowerment activities for women
- Dissemination, awareness raising and lobbying at both national and EU levels

EMPOW-AIR is a Daphne project coordinated by SURT and developed with the collaboration of various partner organizations: Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (Italy), International Centre for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, IMIR (Bulgaria), Asociatia Femeilor Tiganci “Pentru Copiii Nostri” (Romania) and Fundación Secretariado Gitano (Spain).

Futhermore, the following organisations participate as associated partners in the project: Association ‘Svetlina’ (Bulgaria), Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques (Spain) and the Association for the Promotion of Women in Romania, APOWER (Romania).

http://www.surt.org/empow-air/

Daphne project – ‘Speak Out! Empowering Migrant, Refugee and Ethnic Minority Women against Gender Violence in Europe’ coordinated by the Sociology Department of the University of Padova, Italy (January 2011 – December 2012).

Speak Out! is a project that aims at contributing to the prevention and combat of violence against migrant, refugee and ethnic minority women, from a gender and an intercultural perspective, both among the host society and the migrant communities themselves. Additionally, the project aims to empower migrant, refugee and ethnic minority women to protect themselves against violence, by developing both individual and collective strategies. The participating countries are Italy, Spain, Finland and the Netherlands.

Nowadays, women compose almost half of the persons migrating to the European Union. Despite the vulnerability of migrant women to violence on the grounds of their gender and their origin, most of the anti-violence activities in all partner countries do not sufficiently take into account the needs and interests of migrant, refugee and ethnic minority women. Consequently, there is a need for more participatory and inclusive approach to gender violence against migrant women, and safe and friendly spaces and networks to speak about violence against women.


The overall goals of the project are:

- To support migrant, refugee and ethnic minority women to improve their personal abilities and capabilities in order to find ways to prevent and combat any form of gender-violence.

- To facilitate the setting-up and lasting of intercultural networks among them as well as between them and local services.

- To enhance full participation of migrant women in the society and promote their citizenship.

In order to accomplish the main proposal of empowering women who are, or are at risk of, suffering violence, it is expected to conduct different activities through culturally appropriate and gender sensitive peer support methods and strategies, such as training, counselling and formal and informal support groups activities. These will include the participation of migrant women, professionals working on violence, immigration and women issues, and also migrant men.


SURT is one of the partner organisations of the project, together with: Fondazione Basaglia (Italy), Municipality of Padova (Italy), Fundación CEPAIM (Spain), The Aleksanteri Institute-University of Helsinky (Finland), MONIKA Multicultural Women’s Association (Finland), Tiye International (Neteherlands) and CIRSPG of Padova (Italy).

The Department of Sociology of the University of Padua will coordinate the transnational project.

Link. Career Services for Better Jobs. Project coordinated by BFE. Leonardo da Vinci project (01/10/2010 – 30/09/2012)

Link. Career Services for Better Jobs’ is a project that aims to transfer a comprehensive program for upgrading the guidance skills of career practitioners in the social arena in order to meet the needs of specific groups in risk of exclusion: low-paid and low-skilled workers, senior adults and women employees. The materials built in a previous project will be adapted and implemented in 3 target countries: Spain, Bulgaria and Poland.

The specific objectives of the project are:
- To promote the Manual among potential beneficiaries and stakeholders across Europe;
- To improve the capacity of stakeholders to address target groups which are in risk and in need of career services;
- To facilitate access and quality provision of the career services for vulnerable groups in the labour market with low and out-of-date qualifications and lack of employability and career management skills;
- To raise the awareness of institutions and counsellors about the need for continuous vocational training of career practitioners.

LINK is a Leonardo da Vinci project in which SURT participates as partner organization. The project is coordinated by the Bulgarian Foundation for Education (Bulgaria) and will be implemented by a consortium of partners from EU countries: ISETUR (Bulgaria), BEST (Austria), Lodz (Poland) and Folk (Sweden).

Project's website: http://www.link-project.eu/en/

Daphne project - Raising a Child through Prison Bars. Project coordinated by Institute of Child Health. (01/01/2010-31/12/2012)

The majority of women prisoners all over Europe are mothers; a high percentage of them are the sole care giver of their child/ren & they have suffered multiple forms of social exclusion as well as of abuse already prior to their imprisonment; among other implications, these risk factors can lead to impaired parental abilities. This, along with the imprisonment of a parent can have devastating effects on children’s development & mental health; children of imprisoned parents are also at greater risk of being homeless or institutionalised, incarcerated themselves and of being exposed to abuse due to inadequate parental supervision. 

The project’s objectives are to contribute to: 
- Support imprisoned mothers & future mothers to handle their own experiences of abuse 
- Prevent and combat children abuse and neglect as well as to provide support to children of imprisoned parents in order to both disrupt the cycle of violence & enhance children’s resilience 
- Collect data in 3 EU countries aiming to map the imprisoned mothers population in regards to demographic information, needs and problems faced by them, their children and families

The role of SURT in this project will be of external evaluator. The rest of the partners of the project are: the Institute of child health (coordinator, Greece), Babes-Bolyai University (Romania),South-West University "Neofit Rilski" (SWU) (Bulgaria), European Anti-Violence Network (EAVN). 

Gruntdvig Project- En-Vogue. A tailor-made educational programme to provide an attractive stage for young females learners. Project coordinated by BEST. (01/11/2009-31/10/2011)

Although female representation in IT and economy courses has generally increased, it is still common that socially disadvantaged, low-level educated women show low participation in this kind of courses. This lead to barriers: reduced participated, in a wider society, reduced access to information, reduced chances on an increasingly demanding labour market. 

In order to improve this situation, it is important and necessary for adult education to employ practicable strategies of how to attract motivation and increase participation of female learners in these subjects. 

Following this idea, En-Vogue is targeted at education providers dealing with disadvantaged, low-level educated young female learners and will equip them with innovative methods and tools for providing IT and economy contents embedded in the thematic world of fashion. 

The other partner organisations are: BEST (coordination, Austria), VHS Charm (Germany), IRFA SUD (France), IAL (Italy), FOLK (Sweden), CANK (Turkey) and Careers Europe (UK).