Report 2008

Position and context of activism of women defenders is considerably different than the one of men. According to that context Zene na delu created methodology to look upon possible answers on protection needs of women human rights defenders in Serbia. We also believe that stronger women's network could be established by putting the awareness on protection needs on the agenda of women's groups in Serbia.
 We started last year a program of serial weekend workshops for women activists in order to raise awareness on our own protection. In year 2008 we continued with similar program but we put attention to the application of the gained knowledge and also to continue to increase awareness of women NGO scene on need for gender sensitive security and protection mechanisms.
We implemented program for 2008 by organizing meeting with women participants from previous year, weekend workshops and the following meeting in particular women’s groups. Documentation upon program has been continuously collected during 2008 as well
and will be published in 2009 in the form of Manual.

[Follow up meeting]
Follow up meeting with participants from different women's groups in Serbia that took part in trainings and need assessment in 2007 was the starting activity for the year 2008. It took place on 28th February in Regional center for minorities, from 17.30-20.30. Thirteen women participated in this meeting.

We invited and met women that took part in our program for 2007 in order to evaluate previous work, inform them about our program of trainings for the following year, but raise discussion on possible approaches on our protection mechanisms.
Also we discussed main challenges in putting the issue on protection needs into daily work of women and their organizations. Special attention we gave to collect/share experiences from 2007 program that have been recognised as most efficient and applied for developing agenda on further personal and organisational improvement regarding protection needs.

After giving an short introduction on NA findings from 2007 we presented plan of activities for year 2008. For the discussion we raised three main questions on:

a.Impressions from 2007 program
b.Do we and how we are sharing our experience from the program and information about it? What are the main obstacles and challenges?
c.How do we continue to work regarding issue on burn out?

Conclusions we made are that most women are having very positive impressions on program and their participation in it. For some it opened some other needs and necessity to work on them. For some participants it is arena for learning for their own protection but some said that they are “tired of teaching others”. Also, some need more time to improve some of their skills and to able to share it with other women in the group. Some groups are having ‘strategy’ to have every time another woman who’s participating in the program and than they all share their knowledge and skills. Half of the women reported very successful implementation of their knowledge into their educational and advocacy work.

In terms of future work, women are positive about presented plan for 2008, but also stated that facilitators/trainers should be invited in particular groups, so we can raise discussions, to create a manual on exercises and games, texts, etc. and to be aware of necessity to support better each other in the future.

[Workshops]
First weekend workshop “Women’s Body, our personal herstory” has been organized with Dijana Milosevic, theatre director (DAH theatre, Belgrade)and it took place on 22th - 23th March, 2008. Workshop has been organized in Cultural center REX. 14 women participated in the program during both days (10 – 5 PM). Half of women participants are coming outside of the Belgrade. Most participants are young women and active in their women’s groups.

Second weekend workshop “Penelopa, Kasandra, Medusa” was lead by Ingrid Lutz, dramatherapist and trainer from Freiburg, Germany. It took place on 14th- 15th, June 2008 in Cultural center REX (10- 5 PM). 26 women participated in it. Eight women came from women’s groups from outside Belgrade. Meeting on methodology of work of Ingrid Lutz and her involvement in women’s movement in Germany (she was a co-founder of the first women’s center in Germany and active in feminist movement for many years, working with women violence survivors) we organized in cooperation with Autonomous women’s center on 13th, June from 7-9 PM. Twenty women participated, including women counsellors, clients of the AZC and interested women from similar professions.

Third (adapted) weekend workshop on feminist self defence “No means NO!” was lead by Irmgard Deschler, women’s self defence teacher from famous feminist network Wildwasser e.V. from Munich, Germany. It was organized on 25th- 26th, October, 2008 in Cultural center REX (10- 5 PM). 14 women participated in this weekend workshop. This group was unique because all of them have been young women and half of them coming from other cities and organization outside of  Belgrade. Meeting on methodology of work of Wildwasser and Irmgard’s long term dedication to teach women skills on how to defend themselves has been organized in Labris, lesbian human rights organization on 27th October, 2008 at 7PM. Fifteen interested women came and participated in very live and interesting discussion on this issue. Due to cancellation of many women being occupied in the weekend before 25th-26th and number of interested, we organized one self defence weekend workshop workshop, but with larger number of planned participants (it was planned that in one workshop participate 8 women due to methodology of work).
 
Manual - In 2007 we collected certain material upon creating Manual on Minded body programe. The aim of it is to support women's groups to establish more efficient strategies according to their protection needs, but also to do the documentation upon our work.
Manual will present biographies of authors, their principles of work and techniques that has been used with group of women. It is meant to be also as a guide for other women to raise awareness about taking care about themselves in their work with abused women and possibilities to use forms of creativities in direct work either with clients or with their colleagues. Manual will be offered to other professionals to increase importance of dealing with violence in society.
Manual will have theoretical and practical part and will be combined with materials from each course. During our work on implementation of the program we collected material on each activity and will publish it  in 2009 in order to support third year of work on this issue and reach planned goals we set.

Central part of our project are weekend workshops. Their program are intensive, design according to needs of women who participated in need assessment we did last year program but also accommodate to the needs identified during  the follow up meeting at the beginning of 2008. By implementation of this project activity we reached the most two results. One regarding women HRD educated on their protection needs and another one regarding applied gained knowledge and skills on protection and security. Most women participated in workshops reported that they get satisfying and applicable knowledge on their protection that suits their area of work. Most frequent comment on successfulness reached is about ‘safe space’ in which women were first able to understand better how to make progress on self protection. Second, methodology of work during the workshop most women estimated as very valuable not only for their personal protection development agenda but astonishing motivation to applied those knowledge in everyday work with other women in organization, but those women to whom they address their work in local community.

Not are all women in the same manner interested to share that knowledge with other women in the group. So, most women’s groups get proper information and some skills and techniques from the women who participated in the program, but just some have gotten educational ‘package’. Few organization were very organized in that way (Women’s space, Nis; Center for girls, Nis; SOS Hotline for women and children victims of violence, Novi Sad).

Regarding increased awareness, we reached progress, but as we already mentioned above we have to accomplish more and some new approaches in order to grow better communication and motivate women on issue for gender sensitive security and protection mechanisms. However, some work has been done and we valuate that follow up meeting was the activity with whom we reached mostly that goal.

[Networking]
Zene na delu pay  a lot of attention to the networking and exchange of ideas and experiences, and we consider cooperation with other organizations/individuals/networks to be an important part of our work. Related to our project we have developed more close cooperation with women's organizations in Serbia and also we worked on presentation of the project in the surrounding countries during every regional meeting we attended. Zene na delu regularly take part in the international feminist and queer festival Rdece Zore in Slovenia, and in 2008 we have put the issue of protection of women human rights defenders on the agenda of the festival through workshops and lectures and this topic was recognized as important.
We have also continued our cooperation with FrontLine the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, Dublin, Ireland www.frontlinedefenders.org
In October, the members of FrontLine visited Zene na delu so we could discuss the progress of our activities regarding this project. That was also the time when the attack on QueerBelgrade festival happened and that was the issue of the meeting as well. Since Zene na delu support Queerbelgrade from the very begining we discussed various strategies of support in the the case of violent attacks and discussed the position of LGBTIQ population in our country.
We have also established connection with German feminist network Wildwasser that deal with survivors of sexual abuse and violence and their member Irmie Deschelr was trainer within this project.
Our work on promotion and networking within this project had two aims: to promote this issue widely since women activists/ human rights defenders face similar problems world wide, but also to exchange experiences and methodologies with other organizations and networks working on the same issue. We are glad to say that our methodology was positively evaluated by FrontLine and WildWasser but we have also gained valuable insights in their methodology that we incorportaed in our work.