SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN BELARUS
Establishing a NGO Crisis Centre for Women in Minsk
In 1997 a group of Belarusian social workers took contact to deh. They wanted to establish a crisis centre for women and their children in Minsk; a centre that should act as a practical centre and a knowledge centre.
In Belarus which is a previous soviet state in the old East Europe and people here were not used to ask questions about state decisions and never critical questions about social problems in the society.
Belarus is a very complicated country to operate within in 1997 as it is to day. After 1½ years of fight to find premises we managed. During the period many social workers and volunteers were trained to manage the centre. The social law adapted as well lessons learned from the project and we manage to register the centre as an NGO. The Belarus social workers manage as well to get good contact with healthcare personnel, police, social workers' education universities and the unemployment service.
During the project period we managed as well to get a constructive cooperation with the Danish and Swedish organisations (LOKK in Denmark and ROKS in Sweden). ROKS delivered many training hours and study visit as well as promotion materials that became adapted to the Belarus situation.
The centre is to day crisis centre but also knowledge centre for a network of crisis centre that became established during the project period. To day they are members of international crisis centre organisation and has cooperation with Russia and Baltic countries' crisis centre. Minsk centre have close cooperation with IOM (International Organisation for Migration).
The Project was supported by the EU and the Swedish NGO Forum Syd with SIDA grant .deh was lead applicant, project manager and responsible for EU trainers..
Inclusion of people with special needs
During the years of working in Belarus we have started new cooperation fields. In 2010, during the study visit in Denmark, where the leader of the Belarus Association for Wheel Chair Users participated, we decided to continue cooperation about inclusion. In Belarus more than 70 big institutions hidden away and far from population are keeping all kind of people with disabilities.
So together with Stevns' Handicap Council and Polish Domus Zagórze we have started cooperation about development of new alliances that can support inclusion aimed at the labour market.
