Safe Hut – Holding safe spaces for women and girls’ empowerment
Safe Hut – Holding safe spaces for women and girls’ empowerment
(1 April 2023 – 31 March 2025)
EС Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund
(AMIF-2022-AG-CALL-THB 101100732)
Trafficking in human beings is a horrifying reality and human rights violation rooted in gender inequalities. People are trafficked for different purposes, but sexual exploitation remains the most prevalent in EU. Moreover, with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the risk of violence, exploitation and abuse is heightened. As a key strategy for the protection and empowerment of VoT women and girls and based on findings of the previous AMIF-funded projects, it is necessary to support social and labour integration of women and adolescent girls’ victims/survivors of trafficking by establishing Women and Girls Safe Spaces (WGSSs) i.e. spaces co-created with women and girls entangled in conflict, disasters and displacement which supports their empowerment and participation. The main target of the Safe Hut project are third-country national women and adolescent girls who were exposed to trafficking experience, including those who have not obtained an official identification, with the special focus on women and girls’ victims of trafficking and those at risk due to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
The Safe Hut project directly involves 7 experienced partners from 6 EU countries (Italy, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria), some of which have been at the center of mass migration from Ukraine.
Building on the WGSS model developed by International Rescue Committee and based on practical experience of Centro PENC regarding the establishment of WGSS in Palermo, the project will establish and pilot 4 new WGSSs in Greece, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria.
The main methodologies and approaches of Safe Hut and established WGSSs are:
- Empowerment: WGSSs offer an empowering space for women and adolescent girls in all their diversity, where they are included in its planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation, thus transforming them from beneficiaries into active agents of change.
- Solidarity: WGSSs provide a space for diverse networks of women and adolescent girls who support and inspire one another and where gender inequality and intersecting systems of oppression and discrimination are overcome.
- Inclusion: WGSSs are committed to celebrating diversity and improving how women and girls‘ access, participate and shape WGSS services ensuring that diversity is represented and engaged as equal informers and decision-makers and beneficiaries. Child-sensitive approaches are employed when approaching underaged girls VoTs ensuring their safety and rights.
- Context-tailored: each WGSS is designed in response to contextual variables such as the geographical area to be covered, the assessment finding, as well as the experience, capacities and resources of the organisations implementing the WGSS programme.
- Women and girls led and participatory: women and girls are consulted, and their input included from the beginning in decisions related to the design, implementation and monitoring of the WGSS.
- Community-informed: key stakeholders are engaged from the outset of WGSS planning, helping to secure support for the WGSS, and facilitating greater and safer access for women and girls.
- Trauma-informed: the project will employ strategies to help the stakeholders and staff involved take into consideration the impact of traumatic experiences on empowerment strategies.
- Non-formal learning and listening methodologies: applied throughout the assessment of the context and capacity building activities for the staff (including forest bathing methodology to support wellbeing of the staff) and also through the activities implemented within WGSS, encouraging the development of personal and occupational skills of the staff and beneficiaries.
Project activities include:
- Initial assessment and Capacity Building for the staff operating WGSS
- Launching and Piloting WGSS model
- Communication, Networking and Sustainability