Social mentoring with a gender perspective
Our purpose
Violence against women is a problem of systemic nature. It requires identifying more effective and higher-impact strategies to improve the lives and prospects of women who suffer from it.
Dones Mentores responds to the need to expand and improve support for women in their processes of recovery from sexist violence. Our main added value is to offer personalized training capacities that adapt institutional assistance schemes to the person, and not just the person to the schemes. We work in close cooperation with women’s care services and with local institutions and associations, both in the prevention and care phases and in social restitution.
We focus on alleviating the shortcomings of the intervention and assistance system, through a non-vertical approach and social innovation, by closely monitoring mentees in the social restitution phase, by providing personalized care for each woman, identifying new attitudes and forms of violence.
Empowerment
We empower women by creating networks of mentors and training them. Neither victims nor survivors: they are all mentors. With our networks of mentors, we raise awareness about the importance of community participation, about the potential and value of experience in the processes of exit from sexist violence, and about the structural dimension of patriarchal violence.
Employability
We work specifically on the pre-employment challenges that concur in women who want to enter the labour market. We address the impact of sexist violence on the job search processes of women who suffer or have suffered from it.
Support
We bring networks of mentors closer to women in vulnerable situations, and we accompany them in their processes of escape and recovery from sexist violence. We compensate for the shortcomings of the system of intervention and assistance to women, through a non-vertical approach, close monitoring during the social restitution phase, personalizing care for each woman, identifying new attitudes and forms of violence, and social innovation.
Our impact
To measure the impact of a program aimed at women who face sexist violence, it is crucial to adopt an approach that values their strengths and resilience, and that promotes the reconstruction of their identities and lives in freedom. This approach must also recognize the difficulties in attributing specific results.
Impact on mentors and mentees:
The mentors are resilient women who have overcome sexist violence, or also women committed to equality. During the sessions, these women reevaluate their own experiences, which allows them to reinterpret their experiences and strengthen their self-esteem. For mentors without direct experience of violence, these sessions are an opportunity to better understand the effects of patriarchal violence and recognize the barriers imposed by gender stereotypes.
As for the mentees, after the sessions we observe improvements in their mood, self-esteem and personal safety. These improvements include a greater ability to make decisions and overcome social isolation. We also noticed progress in the reconstruction of their identities through rewarding activities and the abandonment of dynamics that re-victimize them. The impact is especially significant on migrant youth and women, and in reverse mentoring, where young women guide older women.
Impact on professional teams:
Our method adds value to the instruments put in place to prevent and eradicate sexist violence. Mentors become an additional resource for professionals, especially in cases of social isolation. Mentoring facilitates a more comprehensive and specialized intervention and allows the repair objectives to be expanded and better concluded. The care services receive training in mentoring with a gender perspective and share their learnings with the Dones Mentores team.
