At the beginning of October, we had the honor to organize the Synergy Meeting, which allowed to share experiences and good practice among experts from different parts of Europe in the field of fighting domestic and gender-based violence.
At the beginning of October, we were given a unique opportunity to coordinate the program of the 4th Synergy Platform against Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. Members of this platform are representatives from countries receiving support from the EEA and Norway (eg Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Czech Republic and others). The platform is supported by the Council of Europe. The main aim is to fight domestic and gender-based violence together by sharing good practice and finding synergies.
In the first part of the meeting we focused on youth partner violence and cyberbullying, the second part was focused on awareness campaigns, and how to create and evaluate them effectively.
In cooperation with the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the Government, we have been able to host many experts from the Czech Republic, Norway, France and Germany.
Ladislav Klika presented the results of an international research on teenage dating violence - its prevalence and coping strategies, which we carried out together with the research agency MindBridge Consulting in 2018 (you can find a summary here). Our proFem colleague Dana Pokorná presented the specifics of working with adolescents who were victims of violence in partnership. Dana emphasized the need to adapt the communication means to this target group – e.g. applications or chat. Caroline Øverlien from the Norwegian Research Center introduced the outcomes of European qualitative research among juveniles and young victims. In addition to research data, examples of good practice and interventions to prevent violence among young people in France were presented. This presentation was taken by Martin Szcrupak of the French Ministry of Solidarity and Health.
Pavla Klimešová introduced the document “Caught in the Net”, which draws attention to the perils in cyberspace. The goal is to raise awareness of this taboo subject. In order to do so, she introduced the activities of filmmakers and child cyber violence crime prevention specialists.
The afternoon part of the meeting focused on awareness campaigns. Juliána Kamas and Martin Jůza, from the company Krutart, s.r.o. presented the topic from the media and graphic society perspective.
Hanne Finanger, representing the Norwegian police, shared the experience of using Facebook as an information channel to spread awareness of domestic and sexual violence, and of the use of the so-called "cyber-patrols" that are active in the prevention of online crime.
At the end of the meeting, Jenna Shearer, representing the Council of Europe and Karin Heisecke, expert in international politics, spoke about international policy experts, focusing their presentations on awareness-raising campaigns and ways of evaluating them.
More information about the content of individual contributions can be found here.
