Empowerment Programs for young Women with Crisis Experience

Bae, Hwa –jung (Seoul Resource Center for Young Women)

:Focusing on “Theme Project”

Young Women with Crisis Experience

- Repeatedly experience various socio- cultural crises

- Few return to home and society

- Lack of proper empowerment programs

Young Women with Crisis Experience and Current Society

Shelters- Center around protection only: uniformed

program/ limited to providing meals and clothes

- Frequent replacement of staffs, financial difficulties, limited access to various resources

Public Services - Insufficient policies for empowering

teenage women

Young Women with Crisis Experience and Current Society

Empowerment Programs:Theme Project

Goal: To provide empowerment programs for teenage women with crisis experience in shelters

- Provides various programs from gender perspective

- Provides links to social resources

Changes and Development 1 `01~`02 `03~`04 `05

Organizations

13(42) 17(56) 18(60)

Goal Financial support Healing and development Development and empowerment

Social Resources

Shelters/medica services

************>>

Professional counseling centers/ academic institutions (for monitoring)

****************>>

Feminist Culture and leadership

Problems Lack of motivation to analyze teenage women’s needs

 

stigmatization

The Characteristics of Empowerment Programs 1

Programs that reflect the actual needs of recipientsExpanded access to social resources Improvement on professionalism based on training

and monitoring

The Characteristics of Empowerment Programs 2

social/education resources

(seoul resource center for young women)

Theoretical Guidance and Consultation

: Monitoring Team

Professional organizationshelter

Empowerment Programs: Theme Project monitoring

Alternative schools

Counseling centers

Cultural organizations

shelters

Leadership training academies

Shelter Programs

for Teenage Women

Vocational schoolsworkshops

Medical institutions

Supervisory organizations

The Characteristics of Empowerment Programs 2-1

The Characteristics of Empowerment Programs 3

Teenage women: isolated from policies for women and social welfare services

Positive possibilities: potential abilities of teenage women / activists and the personnel of related organizations/ shelter programs

Overcoming financial difficulties by linking local resources with the empowerment programs

Activity 1 • 1

Activity 2 1

Activity 3 1

Achievements

• Diversification of the shelter programs

• Acceleration of exchanging information and resources between shelters and NGOs

• Expansion of the contents in programs and professional organizations

: medical services, preparatory programs for returning school, job opportunities, “Say no to drugs” programs, programs for feminist culture and leadership and so on

Further Tasks and Future Goal 1

• Why does the empowerment programs need to adopt a gender sensitivity?

-To draw a larger picture and gain better understandings of teenage women in their unique social context (sex trade, sexual violence, and pregnancy)

- To strengthen the ability to introspect and change the gender inequality of our society

- To integrate social welfare programs and a gender perspective

Further Tasks and Future Goal 2

• To improve the ability of the personnel of shelters

: Workshops, education programs, consciousness-raising programs from a gender perspective

• To build infrastructure in order to develop various programs and policies for teenage women