PACT - Promoting Awareness for Cooperation
and Training in the Field of Domestic Violence
Progress Report
Public Part
Project information
Project acronym:
PACT
Project title:
Promoting Awareness for Cooperation and Training
in the Field of Domestic Violence
Project number:
502810-LLP-1-2009-1-DE-GRUNDTVIG-GMP
Sub-programme or KA:
Grundtvig Multilateral Projects
Grant agreement number:
2009-3404/001-001
Project website:
www.pact-eu.org
Reporting period:
From
01.01.2010
To
31.12.2010
Report version:
1
Date of preparation:
25.01.2011
Beneficiary organisation:
BUPNET GmbH
Project coordinator:
Sabine Wiemann
Project coordinator organisation:
BUPNET GmbH
Project coordinator telephone number:
+49 551 5470747
Project coordinator email address:
[email protected]
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be
held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
© 2009 Copyright Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency.
The document may be freely copied and distributed provided that no modifications are made, that the
source is acknowledged and that this copyright notice is included.
Executive Summary
Violence against women crosses all socio-economic levels, age, groups, races, religions
and countries. Numerous studies have been published that document the prevalence of
domestic violence and its serious effects on women and children. PACT is a project financed by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. It builds on the results of the preceding project BACKGROUND, which developed a European Grundtvig
training course aiming at improving competences of adult education staff in the area of
domestic violence.
PACT seeks to act on the background of the support chain of women and children survivors of violence in Europe by increasing the level of awareness and knowledge among all
relevant vocational groups. It addresses professionals in education and vocational training
as multipliers as well as in various services offered to victims such as medical and psychological care, shelter, legal consultancy and empowerment.
The project develops an innovative approach aiming at filling an identified training gap by
providing training in the field of domestic violence to those target groups that work in different services in the field. The central objective of the PACT training is on the one hand
to deepen knowledge about domestic violence among professionals and on the other
hand to promote a closer cooperation and networking of all relevant stakeholders at a
European level by exchanging knowledge and practice with view to different intervention
models.
In the first project phase the partnership conducted comprehensive research activities including interviews in order to explore specific needs and wishes in terms of training and
networking of local stakeholders working in the field of domestic violence. The transnational synthesis of the results was compiled and is available on the PACT website. It has
been the basis for the development of the PACT training kit. The partnership analysed all
results of the needs analysis and clustered raised training topics in seven training modules. The seven modules contain both face-to-face and e-learning units and contain basic
information and training material relating to the issue of domestic violence. They are designed for use in training and further training courses for professionals in various fields.
The training kit is going to be piloted at national level by each partner institution from
March 2011 onwards. The overall duration of the course is approx. 70 hours of which
about 50 hours are provided in e-learning. An integral part of the national pilots will be a
two-day international workshop in Lisbon that will bring physically together representatives
of various backgrounds and promote an international exchange. The focus of the workshop will be on risk assessment for survivors and for professionals, exchange of good practice as well as on new approaches from the field. Apart from gathering feedback on the pilot
phase, lots of time will be dedicated to networking activities and exchange of expertise.
The transnational consortium which implements PACT consists of seven partner institutions
from Austria, Germany Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Portugal. They combine a longstanding experience in education with a variety of approaches and backgrounds to the issue
of domestic violence: experiences as course developers and as trainers in the field of domestic violence, project promoters and evaluators.
Further information on the project with its activities and results can be found at the project
website: www.pact-eu.org
Table of Contents
1.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES .................................................................................... 5
2.
PROJECT APPROACH ...................................................................................... 6
3.
PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS............................................................... 10
4.
PARTNERSHIPS .............................................................................................. 12
5.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE .............................................................................. 15
6.
CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES ................................................................. 17
1.
Project Objectives
In the European Union, domestic violence against women and children remains an alarming phenomenon. Studies reveal that in Europe at least one in every four women has
been beaten or otherwise abused in their lifetimes. Despite the increased attention to the
issue and many positive developments in policy and practice, violence against women is
still widespread and has not led yet to a common European educational approach. According to a European study conducted by the Council of Europe (2006-2008), there is up
to now no common educational pattern in the field of violence against women in the
Europe.
PACT intends to fill this identified gap by developing a training kit consisting of an introductory workshop, e-learning modules as well as an international workshop.
The core element will be the ICT-based content dealing with domestic violence. It will be
jointly developed by the partners and tested in each partner country. The ICT-based content will have a truly European character to ensure a high degree of transferability to other
countries.
PACT addresses professionals in education and vocational training as multipliers as well
as various services offered to victims such as medical and psychological care, shelter,
legal consultancy and empowerment.
The training will support them
to develop and improve their knowledge about domestic violence
to develop skills on how to cope with situations of domestic violence
to increase awareness of the varied forms of abuse and the implied consequences
on the victims and on the society
to learn how to assess the risk in an abusive situation
to share their knowledge with and learn from others
to build a larger European network with complementary expertise
The main objective is to sustainably improve the support chain of victims of violence all
over Europe with the main purpose to support a larger number of women and children
survivors of violence all over Europe. In a broader view, domestic violence has a significant impact on the victims: it lowers the overall educational attainment, mobility and innovative potential of a significant proportion of the population: the women who are victimised
and the children growing up witnessing the violence. They are the final beneficiaries of the
project – specific training and consciousness-raising for professionals dealing with the victims of violence is an effective means of:
preventing such violence;
improving services for victims of violence by handling appeals for help and provision of efficient support;
helping victims to take actively part in all aspects of society life including lifelong
learning.
In addition, PACT seeks explicitly to promote a European exchange of knowledge and
good practice with view to different intervention models and to foster closer cooperation
and networking of all relevant stakeholders in the field of violence against women and
children. To this end cooperative ICT-tools will be made available on the e-learning platform and an international work shop will be organised as one element of the learning path.
Cooperation and networking will be one of the main issues that are tackled in the elearning modules and in the international workshop.
2.
Project Approach
The project PACT seeks to act on the background of the support chain of women and
children survivors of violence in Europe by increasing the level of awareness and knowledge among all relevant vocational groups through awareness raising and training activities. The project approach is to develop a training kit consisting of an introductory workshop, e-learning modules as well as an international workshop. The e-learning modules
tackle substantial topics in the field of domestic violence and are being jointly developed
and tested in the partner countries. A strong European character is envisaged to ensure a
high degree of transferability to other countries and learning environments. The use of ICT
will add to this aim.
PACT is designed for two years (01.01.2010 - 31.12.2011) and is divided in the following
main work phases:
1. comprehensive needs analysis including interview with relevant local stakeholders and conclusions
2. development of the PACT training kit on the basis of needs analysis results
3. seven national pilots for testing the training kit
4. analysis of feedbacks of participants in pilots and conclusions
5. finalisation of the PACT training kit
Needs analysis
In the first project phase the partnership conducted comprehensive needs analysis activities. The overall aim of the needs analysis was to create a sound basis for the development of the training concept with, where possible, the active participation of the target
groups. Information was gathered by means of commonly developed patterns for desk
research activities and guidelines for interviewing various local stakeholders of the support network in the field of domestic violence in order to identify current practice, legal implications and intervention models in the seven partner countries. All partners analysed
existing education and training with view to content, methodologies, good practice and
ICT support. They also identified fields of improvement in the support network for victims
of domestic violence by putting a special focus on networking aspects of different stakeholders in the support chain. The transnational synthesis of the needs analysis results
was compiled and is available on the PACT website: www.pact-eu.org.
Conclusions as to training approach and structure
Building on these results the project consortium:
developed the design of a modular blended learning course on the issue of domestic violence providing on the one hand basic knowledge to those target groups
that do not deal regularly with victims of domestic violence but are likely to be confronted with cases of domestic violence and on the other hand specific knowledge
to those target groups that have been working in the field but want to refresh or
deepen their knowledge and learn more about different approaches
drafted corresponding training materials for e-learning and face-to-face session
and
selected, adapted and set up a virtual learning platform for delivering the elearning modules
Interviewees clearly expressed that there is a need for a modular training programme
geared to professional groups at all levels of experience in the field of domestic violence,
meaning that the section and units of the course can be used independently. In accordance with this concept, training modules can be composed like ‘building blocks’ in various ways according to the training needs and characteristics of the target group(s), and
the time available for training. Moreover, local stakeholders expressed the wish to be able
to work flexibly with the training programme without spatial and temporal limitations.
Against this background the consortium conceived a training programme consisting of
face-to-face and e-learning modules. The combination of multiple approaches to learning
is called blended learning. Blended learning can be accomplished through the use of
'blended' virtual and physical resources and, additionally, takes also into account different
learning styles.
Quality assurance
In the second year PACT will concentrate on assuring a high quality of these results by
testing the course design and training materials and receiving feedback from relevant professionals from the field of domestic violence. The training kit is going to be piloted from
March to June 2011 and will finish with a conclusive international workshop in Lisbon
bringing together participants of national pilots in order to gather feedback on the pilot
phase and to promote a European exchange of expertise and good practice.
On the basis of the results of the seven national pilots the course design and the training
kit will be optimised and finalised.
To meet high quality standards and justify public expenditure a comprehensive evaluation
strategy for PACT has been developed by the internal and external evaluators. It comprises the quality of the envisaged products and their impact on the target groups:
Project Objectives
Needs
of TG
Evaluation of quality of training kit
:
Internal
External
Feedback
evaluation
evaluation
Users
Course design
Training
kit PACT
Evaluation of training impact
Individual training aims
Web platform
Apart from the project outcomes also the process of transnational cooperation and the
efficiency of project management are subject to evaluation. Quality criteria and operational targets for each of the aspects have been defined.
The first evaluation report focuses on project year 1 of the PACT project processes and
progresses, as it is too early to assess the quality of products which are currently being
developed. The report stresses that PACT is well on track with regard to work plan and to
the expected deliveries. The project team met three times face-to-face as well as in
monthly virtual conferences and formed effective working groups in which the main project
results – the training design and materials – have been jointly developed.
Dissemination
Dissemination has been a high priority of
PACT: The central dissemination instrument is
the project website with basic information on
the project, the training and a download area
for products where for example PACT newsletters and other dissemination material such as
project fliers, posters and postcards can be
downloaded: www.pact-eu.org.
With the upcoming opportunity to present PACT
in a big conference in Poland in September
2010, the PACT partnership decided to create
postcards and posters that are a bit out of the
ordinary. Since we did not want to reproduce any
act of violence to attract people’s attention, we
created something less obvious – something that
would not be directly linked to the topic of domestic violence at first glance but that would
make people reflect. The team had the idea to
use simple objects of daily life – even objects
stereotypically linked to women (like shoes) –
and point to the problem that domestic violence
is often not visible at first glance.
PACT has a contact list consisting of around
3000 addresses of various vocational groups working in the field of domestic violence as
well as adults educationalists, providers and practitioners in Europe, national umbrella
associations in education and other multipliers, actors in Grundtvig and other LLP projects
and networks, National Agencies of the Lifelong Learning Programme, European Commission, EACEA, and other European institutions, and of European media. Up to now two
project newsletters promoting PACT and its training offer have been distributed to this
contact list.
Another focus of the project dissemination strategy has been the direct contact with various stakeholders from the field of domestic violence. Apart from involving local stakeholders in the needs analysis as well as in the training development, local representatives
of women’s associations, NGOs, police, training and social organisations were invited in
the framework of the two transnational partner meetings in Göttingen and Malta to a networking event dedicated to presenting the project and its envisaged training and to exchange experience and information pertaining to the field of domestic violence.
In answer to our May newsletter the PACT coordinating team was invited to visit representatives of the Dutch police in Amersfoort working in the field of Domestic violence. In September, two representatives of BUPNET went to see the colleagues in Amersfoort. Apart from
presenting the PACT project and discussing the potential involvement of the Amersfoort
team in the project activities, an interesting exchange on current practice took place.
Moreover, the project has been presented at various national meetings and conferences
in the participating countries and at several European conferences.
3.
Project Outcomes & Results
The main achievements of the PACT project in its first year of funding have been:
to set up the partnership and organise the project work
to conduct a comprehensive desk research aiming at identifying current practice,
legal implications, intervention models and at analysing existing education and
training in order to identify fields of improvement
to contact local stakeholders working in the field of domestic violence to substantiate the findings of the desk research in individual interviews and to explore their
specific needs and wishes in terms of training and networking
to draw conclusions from the needs analysis results for developing the training kit
to develop the draft design of the blended learning course on the issue of domestic
violence
to plan and organise a pilot course which will be held from March 2011 onwards
to produce draft training materials for the pilot course
to select, adapt and set up a virtual learning platform for the e-learning part of the
training
to plan and implement intensive dissemination activities including the production of
a project logo, website, flier and posters, postcards, newsletters, publication of articles, and presentations of PACT at national and European events
The PACT training kit addresses professionals in education and vocational training as
multipliers as well as various services offered to victims such as medical and psychological care, shelter, legal consultancy and empowerment.
The course content includes:
The central objective of the PACT training kit is on the one hand to deepen knowledge
about domestic violence among professionals and on the other hand to promote a closer
cooperation and networking of all relevant stakeholders at a European level by exchanging knowledge and practice with view to different intervention models. In addition, special
importance is attached to consciousness-raising for professionals dealing with the victims
of violence against women and children as an effective means of preventing such violence.
The seven modules contain both face-to-face and e-learning unit. The overall duration of
the course is approx. 70 hours of which about 50 hours are provided in e-learning. The
organisation of face-to-face workshops during the national pilots is with the PACT project
partners who will adjust the time table the specific requirements of their participants.
An integral part of the national pilots will be the two-day international workshop in Lisbon
in June to which two to three participants of national pilots are going to be invited. The focus
of the workshop will be on risk assessment for survivors and for professionals, exchange of
good practice as well as on new approaches from the field such as different ways of handling
the restraining order, “open” shelters or the like. Apart from gathering feedback on the pilot
phase, lots of time will be dedicated to networking activities and exchange of expertise.
Pilots will be accompanied by evaluation activities in order to optimise and finalise the
training kit.
Information on the PACT project, training kit and materials, as well as other resources related to the issue of domestic violence can be found on the project website;
www.project-eu.org.
4.
Partnerships
Geographically the PACT consortium represents seven different countries with a specific cultural background and different experience linked to the issue of domestic violence as well as
to adult education. The diversity of the consortium provides a dynamic basic structure that is
intrinsically rich in terms of experience, culture, knowledge and skills. Each partner contributes to the whole project activities implementation and is responsible for specific work packages.
The consortium includes partners that know each other well, having EU on-going joint projects and/or having other joint activities together. This facilitates the work and management
flows among the partners and assures the good quality of the activities done.
The partners from Austria, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Portugal - all experienced in different Grundtvig actions - combine a variety of approaches and backgrounds to
developing training on several topics, among which domestic violence issues, and experiences as project promoters, programme managers, trainers in the field of domestic violence,
and researchers.
BUPNET GmbH, Göttingen, Germany
Sabine Wiemann, Ines Polzin
www.bupnet.de
BUPNET is an adult education provider with considerable experience in
European projects on the theme of education, training and eLearning and
was involved in the development and delivery of three Grundtvig training
courses, among which the BACKGROUND course.
BUPNET is the coordinating institution of the PACT consortium and thus
responsible for the overall management of the project and the achievement of project objectives.
AMCV, Lisbon, Portugal
Sandra Paulos, Petra Viegas
www.amcv.org.pt
The Association of Women Against Violence (AMCV) is a non governmental organisation whose main aim is to contribute to breaking the cycle
of violence against women and children.
AMCV is an experienced actor in the conception and delivery of training
in the field of domestic violence and is the leading partner for the development of a training kit.
Social Innovation Fund, Kaunas, Lithuania
Liudmila Mecajeva, Diana Basinskaite
www.lpf.lt
The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is a non-governmental educational organisation which has a great experience in the democracy building and
women's human rights issues. and is co-ordinator of the Coalition of
Lithuania NGOs for Advocacy on Women's Human Rights.
SIF with its vast experience in women's rights is the work package leader
for testing of training kit.
Orizzonte, Città della Pieve, Italy
Margarete Berg
www.orizzonte.info
Orizzonte is engaged in promoting intercultural exchange between Italian
and other cultures and languages and adopts an international approach in
actions that are implemented in the region.
Orizzonte took the lead in the needs analysis phase and compiled the respective report.
Opportunities Aid Foundation, St. Julians, Malta
Antoine Gambin, Christina Demicheli
www.oafmalta.org
OAF is a non profit organisation with a wide network with regional social
players in Malta including schools, policy making bodies or entities and is
involved in number of adult training activities that include the delivery of
courses for teachers and teacher trainers on the use of media for dissemination and teaching.
OAF has a wide experience in dissemination activities and the use of
adequate media and is leading partner for the work package dissemination.
Centre for Continuing Education, Sopot, Poland
Urszula Hadrych, Sylwia Knot
www.cku.sopot.pl
The Centre of Continuing Education is a formal adult education centre
which provides vocational secondary education and post secondary vocational education as well as different non-formal and informal training
courses for women.
CKU is in charge of internal evaluation activities within the partner consortium.
die Berater, Vienna, Austria
Elisabeth Frankus
www.dieberater.com
die Berater offer educational seminars and training courses for individuals, organisations, and enterprises. Die Berater bring into the project their
wide experience with a number of European projects in diverse funding
programmes. They have been successfully working on the topic of networking in two European projects and are leading partner in exploitation
activities.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the common work in the PACT project has not only
brought about valuable products but has also been an intensive process of mutual learning
about different approaches to dealing with domestic violence in the partner countries, methodological approaches and cultural contexts. All involved project team members are aware of
such precious opportunities and highly appreciate this important aspect of a Grundtvig Multilateral Project.
Furthermore, the involvement of local stakeholders as potential target users of the achieved
project outcomes (e.g. training kit) at an early of the project in the needs analysis and development activities has also led to new contacts and cooperations at a local or regional level of
the single partner institutions and has a positive impact also on other fields of activities within
the partner institutions.
5.
Plans for the Future
In the second project year (January-December 2011) the main focus is put on assuring
that the PACT training kit will be of high quality and transferable to other European countries.
An import step towards this goal is the implementation of national pilots which will be conducted in each partner country with 8-10 participants.
The national pilots will start in March and last three to four months, during which all modules will be tested in order to have comparable results. An introductory workshop of 4 hrs
includes: getting to know to each other, presenting the course and its contents, expectations, introduction to the Moodle platform. Each partner can organise the face-to-face
workshops according to the specific needs and constraints of the participants. In some
regions longer workshops (whole day) are easier to implement due to long distances (Italy, Lithuania), whereas in other town/regions like in Göttingen short workshops are more
feasible.
The overall duration of the PACT training course is 14 hrs of face-to-face and 58 hrs of elearning (whereby the duration of e-learning hours is only an approximate value and was
calculated very generously).
The participants in all national courses will give feedback in different formats on the content,
approach and methodologies of the course design and training materials.
This feedback will be carefully analysed and the project products will be optimised accordingly.
The PACT training kit with finalised training materials will be available on:
www.pact-eu.org.
Sustainability
A very important aspect of the exploitation and corresponding activities is the selfsustainability of the project’s results, especially after the end of the project. At first, the project’s exploitation activities will include a sound management of the developed material. The
co-ordinator partner will lead the management of the succession issues. The sustainability of
the work should be established by
stable relationships between the PACT-partners and their national and international stakeholders,
finding a “home” for the future PACT-network
integration of the methods, approaches and material into (local) policy
the quality of the PACT-products to be adaptable to different circumstances of the
target group and
trying to find new funding for the services of the PACT-network.
Moreover, the consortium has started to explore potential ways of having the course recommended by an organisation or entity officially recognised in the field of domestic violence.
The partner AMCV, as member of the European WAVE network, has initiated a dialogue with
the WAVE network in order to get a recommendation from them, as this would considerably
add to the sustainability of the project.
It is envisaged that by the end of the project, a viable copy right agreement, satisfactory to all
partners, will be established to cover the non commercial exploitation of the PACT project
results. Each partner of the project will be responsible in leading the exploitation process at
the end of the project in order to manage the project results.
After the end of EU funding the coordinating institution will ensure that the PACT website
(www.pact-eu.org) will remain online for at least two years. Project products will be made
available for download from there.
6.
Contribution to EU policies
Promoting equality between men and women
Equal opportunities for women and men, women rights and other gender issues are obligatory themes for projects and interventions in the field of violence against women, and PACT
is not an exception. Equal Opportunities for women and men are necessarily one important
topic of the training modules
Contributing to combating all forms of discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic
origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation contributing to combating all forms of discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or
belief, disability, age or sexual orientation
The use of violence against women is a violation of basic human rights. The United Nations
has defined it and recognised it as a problem that effects individuals, families, communities
and nations. Numerous studies have been published that document the prevalence of gender-based violence and its serious effects on women. PACT clearly addresses the problem
by acting on the background of the support chain to better support women survivors of violence in Europe by enabling stakeholders to better cope with gender based violence. The
PACT training kit attaches special importance to training and consciousness-raising for professionals dealing with the victims of violence against women and children as an effective
means of preventing such violence.
Developing quality lifelong learning and promoting high performance, innovation
and a European dimension in systems and practices in the field
PACT clearly addresses this objectives, since it will improve the quality of training by filling
the gap of domestic violence related training and it also facilitates the access to LLL by making full use of ICT for the delivery of the training, thus making it easily available for and transferable to interested target groups in all EU-countries.
Increased participation in lifelong learning by people of all ages, including those
with special needs and disadvantaged groups, regardless of their socio-economic
background
In a broader view, domestic violence has a significant impact on the victims: it lowers the
overall educational attainment, mobility and innovative potential of a significant proportion of
the population: the women who are victimised and the children growing up witnessing the
violence. They are the final beneficiaries of the project: By providing relevant stakeholders
with specific competencies and skills, they will be able to improve their services and reach
and support a larger number of women all over Europe and help them to take actively part in
all aspects of society life including lifelong learning.
Improving the quality and increasing the volume of cooperation between organisations involved in adult education throughout Europe
PACT seeks explicitly to promote a European exchange and cooperation among stakeholders such as trainers, teachers, and multipliers in the field of domestic violence. To this
end cooperative ICT-tools will be made available on the e-learning platform and an international work shop will be organised as one element of the learning path. Cooperation and
networking will be one of the main issues that are tackled in the e-learning modules and in
the international workshop.
Exploiting ICT in learning
The PACT training has an overall duration of approx. 70 hours of which about 50 hours are
provided in e-learning accessible on a specifically designed Moodle platform (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). The use of e-learning tools throughout the
course will help participants to improve their computer skills, thus enabling them to apply
modern information and communication technology in their everyday work and in their further
vocational development.