VioGén, comprehensive monitoring system for cases of male violence against women

Publications Bank of innovations

VioGén, comprehensive monitoring system for cases of male violence against women

Ministry of Home Affairs

Image from El País.

Big data system for the comprehensive monitoring of cases of gender-based violence that brings together and coordinates the different public institutions in Spain with competencies in the area of gender-based violence. In this way, the system integrates all the information of interest deemed necessary to be able to assess the existing risk and, depending on the danger involved in each case, the monitoring and protection mechanisms best suited to the needs of each victim are activated.

VioGén provides women victims of male violence with a “Personalized Safety Plan”, with self-protection measures. Likewise, preventive work is carried out by issuing “Automated Notifications” when an incident is detected that could endanger the integrity of the victim.

The aim of all this is to establish a network that allows for better monitoring and protection of the victims, in a rapid, comprehensive and effective manner, whether they are battered women or minors who depend on them.

VioGén

La Inclusivadora, centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities

Publications Bank of innovations

La Inclusivadora, centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities

FCSD

Image from Pexels.

Centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities, which offers different inclusive workspaces, such as a Coworking (shared workspace for people who want to develop their personal and professional projects) and a Fablab (digital creation space with the latest technology, such as 3D printers, which is ideal for promoting the manufacture of small-scale prototypes), designed for training and digital experimentation, both for people with and without disabilities.

The Catalan Down’s Syndrome Foundation (FCSD) launched this project with the intention of creating a work and training space to promote self-employment for people with Down’s syndrome or other intellectual disabilities who want to start entrepreneurial projects. These spaces are also open to all those people who want to carry out entrepreneurial projects that share the values of the FCSD.

From these spaces, the Inclusivadora aims to provide courses and workshops to learn basic knowledge about the use of Fablab technology, as well as social activities open to everyone, but also to teach basic knowledge about how to carry out a business and/or personal project, thanks to individualized advice and mentoring in entrepreneurship.

La Inclusivadora was created with the aim of encouraging interaction between people with and without disabilities and creating a more diverse and enriching work environment. The key to these spaces is the exchange of knowledge between the different agents.

FCSD Fundació Catalana Síndrome de Down

Apptu@, an app that helps break isolation and alleviate stigma in mental health

Publications Bank of innovations

Apptu@, an app that helps break isolation and alleviate stigma in mental health

Grup ATRA

Image from the Grup ATRA website.

Innovative, interactive and close mobile app that allows for more continuous, close and close contact between users, professionals and volunteers of three mental health programs: Actua, Actua Jove and Actua Dona. This app also aims to raise public awareness about the collective suffering from mental health problems, while providing information that may be of interest to all citizens.

The three programmes included in Apptu@ are community-based, integrative and care-focused that provide support for life in a self-employed capacity for people with issues resulting from mental disorder, as well as women who have also suffered or suffer from male violence in parallel. With Apptu@, social contact between beneficiary and voluntary persons is enhanced.

The application is divided into two parts: one public and one private. Within the public, which is destined for any individual in society – such as people from the mental health collective, health professionals and the social sector, people interested in volunteering, relatives, students, young people, collaborating administrations, etc. – you can know the Actua programmes, as well as the different services and resources that form the Grup ATRA. It also attempts to promote inclusive volunteering and networking. But basically, the app aims to give visibility to the people of the mental health collective, as this helps to break stereotypes and alleviate stigma.

As far as the private part is concerned, Apptu@ allows one to work agreements and goals individually with the users of the program, following them more directly and continuously over time and making them participants of the common project that is Actua.

Apptu@

CIRCLES, online psycho-social therapy groups of people suffering from similar situations

Publications Bank of innovations

CIRCLES, online psycho-social therapy groups of people suffering from similar situations

Circles, San Francisco (USA)

Image taken from Unsplash.

Application that offers online support groups to help people struggling with mental and emotional health issues.

Through the use of artificial intelligence technology, Circles asks users a series of questions that allow them to relate automatically to groups of other people who are going through life-like problems: personality problems. or mental health, the sudden loss of a relative, a situation of sexist violence, permanent care of a dependent person, difficulties with raising children, the breakup of the couple, etc. Within these groups of eight people, a professional facilitator is assigned to help participants share their situation.

The aim is to get participants to share their stories and to generate a stable space for conversation and encounter between them that allows them to support each other from similar situations they have suffered.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, which paralyzed people’s ability to connect with others, Circles offered thousands of people the opportunity to find relief and mutual encouragement.

Circles is a private paid service. The first week of group therapy is free, and for the following ones you have to pay about € 26 per week.

Circles

Mentoria Social, mentoring for vulnerable young people to promote social inclusion

Publications Bank of innovations

Mentoria Social, mentoring for vulnerable young people to promote social inclusion

Coordinadora Mentoria Social

Picture from “Projecte Rossinyol”, a study that analyzes the impact of mentoring on migrant teenagers. / APPlying Mentoring

Platform of organizations that develop mentoring projects for young people and other vulnerable groups.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social, comprised of 11 partner entities and 8 member entities, brings into contact mentors with people at risk of social exclusion, mainly young people. With the aim of ensuring social cohesion and equal opportunities, the mentor is a voluntary person who is assigned a person to offer him or her their knowledge and experience.

In this way, both people share a few hours a week that enable mentoring to overcome labor, social, academic, etc. due to mentoring support and guidance.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social, through the formations it offers, also works to promote a quality mentoring model in the field of social action.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social

Be Girl, project against menstrual poverty, and the stigma and taboos it entails

Publications Bank of innovations

Be Girl, project against menstrual poverty, and the stigma and taboos it entails

Be Girl and Plan Internacional

Colombian girls with their Smart Cycle. Retrieved from the website of Be Girl.

Project to combat menstrual poverty, as well as the stigma and the taboos it entails. It consists of an offer of reusable and affordable menstrual products, training workshops and a pendant that helps to monitor the menstrual cycle itself.

Be Girl products consist of reusable menstrual products, such as panties or cloth pads, made of waterproof and absorbing materials that prevent loss and allow for affordable and safe menstruation, both for the environment and for users. They have a useful life of two years, avoiding waste from traditional pads and tampons, as well as being safer, hygienic and more economic in the long term. Its design is comfortable, beautiful, and efficient to respond to the needs of people who menstruate.

The project also offers menstrual cycle knowledge workshops, which include the use of Smart Cycle, a tool that allows one to know the menstrual cycle and its different parts (menstruation, ovulation, maximum fertility day, etc.). It is a pendant that helps track the menstrual cycle and better understand one’s body. These workshops are intended for both girls and boys, to show menstruation as a natural and free of stigmas. They are performed in schools and leisure sites, to make them safer and freer from menstrual taboos.

Be Girl products can also be purchased online, and with the benefits of the sales, the impulsive organizations fund the free distribution of products to girls with few resources.

Be Girl

Cycling Without Age, voluntary rickshaws service for older people

Publications Bank of innovations

Cycling Without Age, voluntary rickshaws service for older people

Cycling Without Age

Ole Kassow, founder of Cycling Without Age, driving two users. Retrieved from the Cycling Without Age website

Voluntary service to promote active ageing and good treatment of older people, from the creation of new intergenerational relationships to combat unintended isolation and loneliness.

Cycling Without Age allows the elderly to feel emotion again and the freedom of a bicycle ride in which they can feel “the wind in their hair”. The service is made possible by voluntary people of all ages, who offer themselves to ride elderly people in two-seat rickshaws to recover a type of mobility that many of these people can no longer experience because of their old age.

It is a service that provides an improvement in the quality of life of both voluntaries and users. For the former it can be a way to exercise, connect with the community and other people and create unexpected relationships; and for the elderly it means to feel freer and avoid unwanted loneliness and isolation: during the rides they can tell personal stories while visiting the city or territory where they have lived all or part of their lives and rememorize episodes they can share with the volunteer and other participants.

There is no fixed timetable for rides or volunteers, but everyone decides how much time they can and want to contribute, making Cycling Without Age an activity that is done for the pleasure of doing it, not out of obligation.

It is an activity that began in Denmark, where bicycles are widely used, but has spread rapidly to 51 countries around the world, among which Catalonia, where it’s called “En bici sense edat”, making this experience available for more people. The Catalan initiative “En bici sense edad” is already present today in four Catalan cities and in April 2021 it received the prize of Social Innovation Maria Figueras i Mercè Bañeras from Plataforma Educativa.

Cycling Without Age

Ipso, international service of psychosocial peer-to-peer support

Publications Bank of innovations

Ipso, international service of psychosocial peer-to-peer support

International Psychosocial Organization (Ipso)

Peer-to-peer counselling session. Retrieved from Ipso’s website.

International mental health service and psychosocial support for peer-to-peer which offers offline and online in more than 20 languages (such as Arabic, Farsi, Punjabi, among others), and which today has more than 200,000 beneficiaries, mostly people who are immigrants, refugees or victims of armed conflicts.

Ipso counsellors are other persons of the same origin who are previously formed in Value Based Counselling, a type of short-term intervention that seeks to establish empathy with the person concerned and to support them without prejudice. In addition, the sociocultural plurality that allows this methodology makes it easier to adapt it to different contexts and to give service to a very high and diverse number of users.

It is a peer-to-peer service, which serves to empower both parties, and which at the same time seeks to prevent the hardships or traumatic situations that have been experienced from becoming chronic or leading to more serious problems, while helping in social integration.

Ipso services have spread widely in some countries such as Afghanistan, where it is present throughout the country through the public health service. The training of the counsellors is done mainly in Germany, in the headquarters of Ipso in Berlin, Erfurt and Hamburg, where they prepare people who are immigrated to do so. In other countries, such as Jordan, Iraq, Haiti and others, the Ipso service has also been extended through collaborating organisations.

Psychosocial support sessions can be performed face-to-face but also online through a secure video platform called ipso-care.com, and this has allowed the territorial scope of Ipso to become much broader, and at the same time indispensable during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is available in more than twenty languages, such as Arabic, Farsi, English, French, Russian, Turkish, Punjabi and others, because it is considered vitally important that people who receive this service can express themselves in their mother tongue.

International Psychosocial Organization (Ipso)

OKencasa, support for non-professional carers

Publications Bank of innovations

OKencasa, support for non-professional carers

OKencasa

Woman taking care of a dependent elderly man. Retrieved from OKencasa website.

Platform for the support aimed at non-professional carers caring a relative dependent at home. Through the Zaindoo app it offers permanent accompaniment from a care specialist, online training, tools for organizing care tasks, and discounts or advantages in services of physiotherapy, legal advice, home adaptation, etc. The aim is to improve the quality of life of the carers and to make their job easier, that is to say to look after the carers.

OKencasa periodically evaluates the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of the care-givers and, accordingly, offers them a personal plan of improvement and support that can be readjusted in time. The professionals in the service ensure that the caregiver is always accompanied and listened to with regard to the burden of their care tasks.

OKencasa also provides information to public social services so that they can provide better support for families and provide more efficient socio-sanitary care. The application is currently available in Euskera and Spanish.

OKencasa

Positive Sparks, platform to give voice to isolated or excluded young people

Publications Bank of innovations

Positive Sparks, platform to give voice to isolated or excluded young people

The Bytes Project

Youngsters participating in a face-to-face workshop from the project. Retrieved from Bytes’ website.

Youth participation platform which helps to give a voice to young people who are more isolated or excluded, to express their concerns, needs and opinion on the services offered by the community. The platform uses “Machine Learning” to analyse and interpret young people’s responses in a fast and automatic way.

In addition to empowering the most excluded young people and facilitating their participation, Positive Sparks allows social services and organisations working with young people with difficulties (mental health, drug abuse, school drop-out, etc.) to detect deficiencies in services, improve their interventions and identify new needs requiring new responses or services. The platform also offers the Public Administrations to use Positive Sparks for the development of youth-related public policies.

Within this initiative, more specific projects have emerged, such as Rural Sparks, which helps to give a voice to young people with difficulties in rural areas. On the other hand, Positive Sparks is not only a virtual platform, but also organizes workshops and presence activities to better meet young participants and to interact with them at first hand. Workshops are imparted by the Bytes organization in collaboration with other organizations, teaching centres, etc. It is currently a tool only available in English.

The Bytes Project