Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) refers to any act that is perpetrated against a person’s will and is based on gender norms and unequal power relationships.
The numbers are shocking. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), nearly 1 in 3 women worldwide has experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. In the EU, since the age of 15, 1 in 2 women has experienced sexual harassment and 1 in 20 women has been raped. The consequences of SGBV are devastating and can have life-long repercussions for survivors including several mental health problems. Yet, very often, mental health services are not available for victims and survivors of violence.
WeToo is a European initiative that aims to enable frontline workers and key stakeholders to better cope with the stress generated by working with SGBV cases and to support women survivors and victims of SGBV on their trauma recovery. More specifically, the WeToo project with the creation of assessment tools, development of training courses for frontline workers, empowerment workshops and psycho-social counselling sessions, will give the opportunity to 120 frontline workers to learn more on stress, mental health distress and trauma related to SGBV.
By delivering empowering and psycho-social counselling guidelines and activities, more than 80 women victims and survivors of SGBV will be empowered to recover from trauma and distress. Finally, more than 100 professionals will be invited to participate in the exchange of best practices and discuss policy recommendations, with the aim to create working environments that focuses on frontline workers’ stress management and mental health of women survivors and victims of SGBV.
The WeToo initiative is implemented in Greece, Italy, Serbia, Germany and Bulgaria and is funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) programme of the European Commission under the number 101005857.
For more information, please visit the project’s site here.
You can download the press release here.