Purpose:
This programme seeks to empower women from all origins and socio-cultural backgrounds in Bilbao through the promotion of health and the prevention of gender-based violence. It aims to fight against the multiple discrimination to which migrant women in Bilbao are exposed.
There are two complementary objectives:
- Promotion of women’s health, understood it in a holistic sense of physical and emotional wellbeing, sexual and reproductive health, and as a basic need of engaging in self-care.
- Prevention of gender-based violence, through the knowledge and the ability to identify the phenomenon, its process and its detectable signs, through the universal human rights perspective.
Rationale:
The majority of immigrants in Bilbao are women and girls. This population suffers multiple discrimination. The legal obligation of Basque public authorities to guarantee their rights, is expressly mentioned since 2005.
The promotion of equality through the empowerment of immigrant women and girls is thus a necessary way of contemplating and answering to this multiple discrimination.
Process:
The programme implements the following actions:
- Training of immigrant women as empowerment agents. The training sessions bring up issues such as the role of women in societies, the concepts of love and gender, self-esteem, conflict-resolution, women’s rights, family planning and gender based violence. After having completed the training, the “Agents for Empowerment” transfer the knowledge to other women in their communities by the snowball effect.The programme has targeted different groups. For instance, women from a strategic community, such as the Latin American, which represent over 60% of migrant women in Bilbao. In other cases, the focus has been given to those women from communities which are more difficult to access through public resources.
- Training of immigrant men as Agents for Equality allowing to make them co-responsible for the promotion of equality and the prevention of all gender-based types of violence.
- Consolidating the network of stakeholders. Workshops are organised with different stakeholders such as associations, foundations and NGOs to raise-awareness on these issues, disseminate information material that can support them in their work and bring the knowledge for the effective use of public services network. Stakeholders are chosen to collaborate by their high profile of immigrant origin profile members.
- Implementing an intersectional strategy for the prevention of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM, onwards) and other types of gender violence. This includes the implementation of a Protocol for prevention and the coordination of a multilevel interinstitutional commission; the capacitation of strategic first-line professionals; training African women and men as Health Agents for the prevention of FGM.
- Raising awareness on different topics directly related to women wellbeing. Two guides have been published into 8 languages: “Guide for all Women” which has been updated incorporating cultural diversity in identity, fertility, sexuality, disabilities, practices and manifestations of gender-based violence; and the “Guide to talk between us”, aimed at promoting the debate and accessibility to resources in a less technical and more intuitive way .
How it works
The programme’s main partner is a non-profit organisation called Módulo Auzolan, which is a socio-sanitary centre that provides medical, psychological, legal and social assistance and care. The organisation is in charge of the trainings and also takes part in the Interinstitutional Commission for the prevention of FGM.
The training sessions are free of charge and childcare service is available. After the training sessions, evaluation questionnaires are shared to fill in by the attendees. Periodical coordination meetings for qualitative and quantitative evaluation are also organised.
Impact:
Since it was launched in 2008, the programme has gradually been consolidated, reaching a larger number of immigrant women, immigrant men, professionals and stakeholders each year.
- Agents for Empowerment trained: 97 Saharan and Moroccan, 116 sub Saharans, 82 Latin and 138 of other origins.
- Health Agents for FGM Prevention: 170 African women and 39 African men.
- Agents for Equality: 54 strategic immigrant men trained.
- Multiplier effect is of 5.793 people in 45 countries.
- Training to stakeholders: 2.548 women and 147 men, in 350 workshops.
- Professional competence enabled to strategic front-line professionals: 543 workers, 302 women and 243 men.
- 28 multilevel coordination meetings of the Interinstitutional Commission for FGM prevention.
- Design and implementation of the first FGM Prevention Protocol in the Basque Country, through the coordinated participation of health, education, social and equality services and the collaboration of the associative network. This technical team has worked on:
- The adaptation of coordination processes between the health, equality, educational and social spheres, with the definition of an action protocol
- The identification of the strategic needs of each discipline in such a way as to enable, from this intersectional approach, the detection of risk, as well as the recognition and comprehensive intervention with families and children at risk.
- The design of tools to support professionals (i.e. registers, informative material, awareness-raising actions, referral leaflets).
Key reference documents:
