Komunitná nadácia Zdravé mesto

Project:Life of Women in Banská Bystrica

Slovakia

About: The HCCF was established in 1994 and is located in Banská Bystrica (80 000 inhabitants) and operates in central part of Slovakia, covering the area of 200 000 inhabitants. Its mission is to know and to connect local issues with local capacity to improve quality of life in local communities. The main goals of the HCCF are: 1. to create and support strong local communities, grassroots activities and leaders – through general grant making, networking, consulting 2. to develop and strengthen local philanthropy – through annual campaign, special events, on line tools, services for donors 3. to strengthen networking and cooperation in community by realizing own projects for public.

Challenge: The need for such project was identified by the research based on Vital signs model in 2016 and by their previous experience from work with volunteer group consisting from Roma and non Roma women and young women after leaving orphanage. They learnt from their stories about many difficulties and unfair treatment because of their origin, race, social status or just being a women.

Solution: To solve the above mentioned challenge KCCF has carried out a survey “The Life of women in Banská Bystrica” about situation of woman in their region. What’s more they have organised focus group discussions, working groups that worked on sujects such as: increasing their own capacity and skills to communicate “their topics” to the public in the way that it will be simple and accepted; increasing and developing “women solidarity” in order to support women for political candidates, or any female professionals to have a courage to take decision making positions and support them in various practical ways; organizing public debates with inspirational women, something like small TEDeX to get the attention and keep discussion. Moreover they have prepared 2 articles about the project and presented it in 1 printed regional newspaper and 1 online local newspaper. They believe that the major change that happened as a result of the project was that they brought up the issue about women discrimination and created a platform for women who are interested in the topic and that they want to work on it together.

SDGs: 5, 11