Workshop 24th September Gödöllő

The municipality library and information centre in Gödöllő was the venue where the workshop took place, the topics of the workshops were violence against women, aid for victims of violence, the services of institutions concerning women and the participation of civil organisations to stop violence against women.

The invited lecturers and discussion partners were mostly experts on the fields of social work, civil organisations, education and law. The head of the association frauen_oase presented the women helping system in Switzerland and gave information about their own services in their women house, the structure of their association and their financial resources. (http://www.reginakozpont.hu/haz/files/Presentation%20frauen_oase.pdf)

Already on this point from the Hungarian side there was the realization that our backwardness will not be easy to overcome. With his observation we don’t mean primarily the financial assets (which still seem to be fixed for the Swiss partner for years ahead), but the good functioning system which is working since almost three decades and provides the women on based laws protection, variety of services and insurance. It seems that in Switzerland it is not questioned what exact background a women has who needs help. It is natural that there is help provided for her. Moreover they seem to let the women use their own competencies so that they can decide how they want to live their life. They don’t treat a drug addicted or prostitute as a force that “drags down” society, but they help her in the first place. They don’t send her compulsory to withdrawal or have prejudices against her. Of course they provide her with all the necessary information and possibilities, so if a woman decides that she wants to leave her formal life, she knows to whom and where she can turn to.
In Basel, many Hungarian prostitutes visit the frauen_oase. For food, for warming up, for changing and buying cheap clothes and sometimes they ask for help and advice. The frauen_oase would like to help these women, and so they decided to find a Hungarian partner through whom the organisation knows more about the circumstances, the background of the institutional service system and the helping civil associations in Hungary.

A project with the same target group is the so named IRIS- project, which was also financed from the Twinning and Partnership Block Grant by the Swiss Contribution (IRIS- project website: http://sexeducatio.hu/index.php?subpage=iris2012 Swiss Contribution for Hungary www.swiss-contribution.admin.ch/hungary). The project leader of the IRIS-project is the Sex Educatio foundation; the further partners are the INDIT foundation, the Periferia foundation and the Flora Dora organisation from Zürich. On the workshop, Katinka Fehér, a social worker from the INDIT foundation, informed about the IRIS- project. 

Unfortunately due to an illness, Lídia Balogh, the head of the Magyar Női Érdekérvényesitő Szövetség (Hungarian Women’s Lobby), who is also the expert of the MONA (Foundation for the women in Hungary), could not take place on the workshop. But luckily, the secretary of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby was on the workshop instead.

For the REGINA Foundation Kinga Milánovics made a presentation under the topic of “Working out of a system from below to stop the violence against women”. 
She talked about the 10 years of the REGINA Foundation, about the completed work in the past and activities that were connected with helping women. Also about the national tendencies regarding the recognition of violence against women, about the possibilities of this acknowledgement and about the efforts against this recognition.

After the presentations there was an active discussion about the current changes of the law, about the existence and limits of the help system, about the not sufficient help system, and about what should be done in the future.