Persianes amb ànima, an art project that empowers women and neighbourhoods

Publications Bank of innovations

Persianes amb ànima, an art project that empowers women and neighbourhoods

Grup Atra

A community project of artistic creation that promotes social and laboral inclusion for women who are vulnerable or at risk of social exclusion. It is a transformative project, based on urban art as an engine of change and social awareness, which builds community and allows the discovery and modification of the environment.

Persianes amb ànima –in English, shutters with a soul– is based on a series of workshops on the restoration, design and painting of shutters taught by professional illustrators and muralists. The project covers the whole process: after an initial theoretical and practical part to introduce participants to the artistic discipline, they carry out a final practice on the shutters of shops in the neighbourhood. Apart from being a collective learning space, one of the objectives of the project is to create safe and comfortable spaces for the participants. In this way, Persianes amb ànims aims for art to be, apart from a distraction, a source of increased security and self-confidence.

During the implementation, an important part of the project is the participatory process that takes place between artists, students and the people in charge of the shops. It is in collaboration with the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood associations that the shutters to be rehabilitated are selected. Once they have been chosen, the task is to jointly decide on the messages that the shutters will communicate, understood and used as a loudspeaker to educate and raise awareness about equality, social inclusion, feminism and sustainability. Also during this process, the stories of the neighbourhood’s small businesses are discovered –which allows neighbourhood ties to be forged– and these stories are then captured in the drawings on the shutters. Thus, Persianes amb ànima highlights the potential of art as a tool for social inclusion and a space for female empowerment, capable of making visible what is not visible.

Concilia, a public service to support the reconciliation of work, family and personal life for people with limited resources

Publications Bank of innovations

Concilia, a public service to support the reconciliation of work, family and personal life for people with limited resources

Barcelona City Council

Free municipal babysitting service for single-parent families with few resources, women victims of gender violence and families with no community network, so that they can combine the care and education of children with work, family and personal obligations.



This service is currently extended to 12 neighborhoods in the city of Barcelona, and operates 7 days a week outside school hours. It has teams of educators, who can work with a maximum of 8 children, and are in charge of attending families, as well as programming and dynamizing the activities that are carried out. This public service can be requested from 2 weeks in advance up to 12 hours in advance, with the exception of emergency cases in which it can be requested up to 30 minutes in advance.


The service works with 2 main objectives: on the one hand, it is a support to the work and personal balance of families with difficulties, which facilitates the training of mothers and fathers, their incorporation into the working world, their involvement in the neighborhood, and even being able to enjoy occasional moments of rest. On the other hand, it is also aimed at offering children quality leisure time, with activities and pedagogical dynamics adapted to different ages and needs.

Children between 1 and 12 years old can enjoy the service on an occasional or more regular basis, and basic, ludicosocial and educational attention is guaranteed through values such as participation, environmental and emotional education, interculturality and art.


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

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@

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

Raaji, chatbot to inform and empower girls and women

Publications Bank of innovations

Raaji, chatbot to inform and empower girls and women

Aurat Raaj

Girls using the chat-bot Raaji. Retrieved from Aurat Raaj’s website.

Chat-bot that informs girls and women about gender issues and helps them empower and defend their rights. It uses a virtual character, Raaji, which is able to answer questions and have a conversation through artificial intelligence algorithms. It provides information on issues considered taboo which are of great importance to female empowerment, such as issues of reproductive health, security or economic autonomy. In addition, a team of professionals detects if there are cases that require professional intervention and are derived from them to the most appropriate services.

The Pakistani organization that has developed it, Aurat Raaj, also collaborates with schools and social organizations to make workshops and activities to empower women and girls, and to try to break some stigma surrounding topics such as menstrual hygiene. To further expand this task, they have created an animated series where the main character, Raaji, passes through different situations considered taboo but which are part of the day-to-day life of many girls. In this way, girls see themselves in a character that they identify with, who normalizes and overcomes these situations, encouraging them to take the initiative through activities such as training courses, personal defence, etc.

Chat-bot is a versatile tool available in English and Urdu, and has also been adapted to Covid-19 to provide reliable information about the disease for girls and boys, in an easy way. Raaji is a sample of how technology can help expand and take the work of social organisations further, creating a tool that is easy to access and which allows the easy and private reporting of issues of great importance and on which there are taboos or misinformation.

Aurat Raaj