Help us organize a global website with helpline information of every country in the world. Help us to organize international and national strategies to create, support and secure women’s helplines and crisishelp in every country of the world.

Creating Worldwide Women’s Safety

The Women’s Helplines Project

The Global Network of Women’s Shelters wants women and children to be safe in every country of the world. Direct help is essential for victims of domestic and sexual violence. A women’s helpline is one of the most important ways of enabling victims to find help and support.

If a woman needs help, what number do you want to give her?

Currently across the globe

• There is NO respected global website that lists accurate, vetted, safe resources for victims of domestic and sexual violence in every country across the world.
• There is no global organization responsible for collecting and constantly updating reliable and accurate helpline information on every continent.
• Over 20% of the countries worldwide do not provide women’s helplines

Help us

1. organize a global website where everybody, victims of domestic and sexual violence, supporting family/friends and professionals, can easily find trustworthy women’s helpline information of every country in the world.
2. organize international and national strategies to create, support and secure women’s helplines and crisis help in every country of the world.

How can you help?

• PROVIDE INFORMATION about women’s helplines for victims of domestic or sexual violence in your country. Even if there is none, it is important information for us! Fill out this form
• DONATE and help us to create women’s helplines in countries where they are missing and to collect and publish worldwide data about the importance of trustworthy women’s helplines. Every contribution is welcome! Donate button at this website: see Womens Helplines.

What are the keys to making impactful presentations at major conferences? How can you connect with an audience? How can you balance meeting your audience’s expectations while also getting your message across? These questions and more were answered by Kim Stockham (pictured above), Head of Corporate Communications, APAC, Expedia Group, in a webinar held especially for 4WCWS presenters last month.

The webinar was designed to help speakers and presenters to prepare for 4WCWS, and give tips on how to make powerful presentations in other contexts. Kim is an experienced trainer who regularly works with Expedia’s most senior leaders and spokespeople to prepare them for media interviews, internal presentations, and stage and panel appearances.

As part of Expedia Group’s CSR program, Kim kindly took time out of her busy schedule to help 4WCWS presenters connect with their audience, get their message across, build confidence on stage, and polish their presentation skills. Drawing on the ancient art of storytelling, Kim gave advice on how to land key messages, use data, and speak to the social-media generation. The presentation is now available online for anyone who missed the session to catch up with it. Whether you are an experienced presenter or if 4WCWS is your first international conference, we are confident you will benefit from this webinar.

Download the slides here (PDF 1,500K), take a look at the results of the pre-webinar survey here (PDF 68K). Many thanks to Expedia Group for hosting this fantastic session!

We have an update on our CSW63 parallel event in New York!

We will be addressing ‘Tipping the Balance: Sexual Assault and Power Relationships’ on Wednesday, March 13th and ‘Women’s Shelters: The Heart of Social Protection Systems’ on Thursday, March 14th!

The 4WCWS program reflects the key issues facing both the shelter community and the broader movement to end violence against women today.

Theme 1: Art and Advocacy

From the Vagina Monologues to the #MeToo campaign, the arts and culture industry is a key player in changing public opinion on violence against women. This session will discuss using the arts to stop gender-based violence.

Theme 2: New Methods in Shelter Management and Social Work

This session will challenge participants to think out of the box about protecting survivors by looking at innovative systems, integration of resources, and services that meet the diverse needs of survivors.

Theme 3: Policy and Legislation

This session will critically examine international standards and goals, explore innovative strategies to improve accountability and coordination and identify laws and policies that help protect victims and end abuse.

Theme 4: Equality and Economic Empowerment

This session will look at ways to increase the productive earning power of women and develop inclusive communities, reduce poverty and violence, and empower women and girls.

Theme 5: Emerging Issues

This session will be an open space for discussion on new and emerging issues such as data collection, privacy, LGBTQ shelter management, institutional abuse, and more.

Abaad and UNFPA have led a capacity building program that started in June 2018 and ended in December 2018. This was an effort by UNFPA Iraq to open a shelter in Baghdad and consolidating others in Kurdistan. The aim was to reinforce the capacities of shelter staff on Human Right Based approach and shelter management. The event also aimed to share experiences and expertise between different governorates and parts of Iraq mainly Kurdistan Iraq which has a long experience in running government women shelters. This event also showed their excitement towards the 4th World Conference and discussed the workshop that will be led by UNFPA Iraq in the shelter conference in Taiwan 2019.

Dutch journalist Aldith Hunkar will reprise her role as co-host of the World Conference of Women’s Shelters at 4WCWS in Kaohsiung, Taiwan this November. Aldith is an experienced presenter, broadcaster and reporter with a passion for social issues.

The former anchor for the Dutch national news channel NOS is known for her warm personality and cool sense of control. She currently runs her own multi-media company, where she combines her talents with her passion for travel.

As a child Aldith led an ex-pat life. Her father’s career for the Dutch government and the United Nations took the Hunkar family from Suriname, to Malaysia, Brazil and Tunisia. Aldith attended different educational systems and learned to express herself not only in Dutch, but English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.

She decided at a young age that her heart was in journalism. She started in the 1980s at the first commercial radio station in the Netherlands, Radio 10, before moving to the national broadcasters. Her alternative Top 40 program and her talkradio show established her as a conversation partner and a fresh and sharp interrogator.

In 1994, Aldith was invited to anchor the NOS news program for children. During the six following years the daily show won many awards, and Aldith was voted Female Television Presenter of the Year 1998.

In 2000, she made the switch to regular news, and became the first camera-journalist in the Netherlands. Not director and interviewer, she was also camera operator, sound engineer, and editor. Her most memorable reports were filmed in Pakistan, Mozambique, Morocco and her country of birth, Suriname.

Her talent for improvisation and her obvious ease during live shows meant Aldith was asked to present a host of high-profile TV programs. As her career developed, she focused on longer productions with a social or cultural character. Her love for and knowledge of music was manifested in a popular weekly jazz show.

Travelling has always remained an important part of Aldith’s life and she now lives part-time in Jamaica, the Caribbean island that stole her heart some twenty years ago, when she first visited as a tourist.

#2 Powerful speakers
4WCWS will feature leaders from civil society, government, the corporate sector and academia to present cutting-edge practices and visions for the future.

Please visit our official website for the application. More information on https://buff.ly/2KtYxyG

#4WCWS #16Days

16 reasons to go to the 4th World Conference of Women’s Shelters (4WCWS) for 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence. Reason number one: Solidarity building. With 1,500 leaders on the front-line of ending gender-based violence, #4WCWS will be a great opportunity to network on a global and regional level. #16Days worldshelterconference.org

There is ONE YEAR to go until the 4th World Conference of Women’s Shelters! As the countdown officially begins, it’s time to start making plans by signing up, submitting a workshop proposal, raising funds, and spreading the word among your networks! #4WCWS

The details on the procedure to participate/sign-up or submit proposals can be found in the 4th World Conference of Women Shelters website ( http://www.worldshelterconference.org/).

Key dates

• October 5, 2018: Call for proposals opens
• October 5, 2018: Scholarship applications open
• November 2018: Registration opens
• January 7, 2019: Deadline for proposals and scholarship applications
• March 2019: Early early-bird registration closes

Shelter Voices, Women’s Shelter Canada’s fifth national survey of Violence Against Women shelters and transition houses, has just been released!

For this one-day snapshot, 215 transition houses and shelters were housing and helping a total of 3,613 women and 2,244 children fleeing violence.

47% of responding shelters were full on their snapshot day. The turnaway rate for women and children seeking shelter was 75%. These numbers suggest that a significant proportion of shelters are chronically over capacity, and staff testimony corroborates these numbers.

This edition of Shelter Voices focuses on the growing interest in offering pet sheltering programs for women leaving abusive relationships. In a recent study, researchers found that while threats to the safety of a household pet increased women’s desire to leave, 56% delayed leaving due to concern about a pet’s safety. 47% would have left earlier if they could have brought their pet to a shelter with them.