For a consecutive year, the Bulgarian Fund for Women offers free consultations to survivors of domestic violence from all over the country. The project provides access to critical individual online legal and psycho-social assistance and easily accessible information on the topic.
The assistance will also reach people from small and remote cities through flexible online forms of counselling and referral and a national information campaign. The project will also be providing access to information to people with hearing impairments, for whom there are few opportunities for inclusion and sharing, by providing sign language translation of online meetings.
To sign up for a free consultation with a lawyer or psychologist, you only need to fill outthis form.
The program includes three components:
- Psycho-social online individualcounseling: The program will run for 3 months (from August to the end of October 2021). The consultations will be conducted online via Viber, Zoom or Skype (or another suitable and accessible tool for users). Those interested will have the opportunity to send a request for an expert: a psychologist, social worker or othercounselorand to agree on the consultation. The program is confidential and designed for people who are in a situation of domestic violence or are in crisis as a result of an incident of domestic violence; want information on how to defend themselves; they need support to clarify how to proceed with their life; they need support to feel resilient in the steps taken to get out of a situation of violence or reduce the risks of new incidents.
- Legal online individual consultation: The program will run for 3 months (from August to the end of October 2021). The consultations will be confidential and will be carried out via Viber, Zoom or Skype (or another suitable and accessible tool for users). Those interested will have the opportunity to send a request for an expert: lawyer/mediator and to agree on the consultation. The program includes: a meeting; identification of the legal problem; targeting relevant institutions, organizations and services; assistance in the process of preparation of an application for issuance of an order for immediate protection/protection under the general procedure under the Domestic Violence Protection Act. Clarifying the consequences of possible legal action helps to overcome the fear of victims of domestic violence when making a decision that guarantees them effective protection.
- Online specialized consultations for adults, perpetrators of domestic violence.The program will run for 3 months (from August to the end of October 2021). It will be available for voluntary inclusion of persons who have a perceived problem with the use of domestic violence and control of aggression. The program aims to: ensure confidentiality; impact on changing attitudes and values; analysis of situations in which customers react aggressively; targeting short-term to medium-term services; developing clients’ new strategies for dealing with conflict situations.
For each of the three different types of consultations, one has to need to fill in the registration form and specify the type of support you might need.
In addition to the individual consultations, three informational online meetings (webinars) are planned, in which experts will answer the questions of the participants and will acquaint them with the steps to get out of a toxic relationship. In addition, an information campaign is already underway to make the general public aware of the most common forms of violence and opportunities for support. Details can be found on thewebsite of Bulgarian Fund for Womenand atloveerrors.bg.
The platform Love Errors created by BFW has become a serious source of information on how to recognize signs of violence for girls and young women, who are at risk. It has grown into a kind of support center – through a series of webinars and individual consultations with lawyers and psychologists, which we held last year, we offered the audience practical help. To build on this practice, in this project we envisage the creation of a series of educational videos that are accessible and clearly answer the most frequently asked questions by potential victims of domestic violence. Through an animated short video, we will give short and informative tips, instructions and useful information.
The Bulgarian Fund for Women project is aimed at victims of domestic violence, perpetrators of violence, or those living in an environment of domestic violence, including witnesses. Domestic violence survivors face a life controlled by the perpetrator of domestic violence, a lack of accessible information on the subject and a capacity to seek help, difficulties in seeking and obtaining justice in the application of the Domestic Violence Protection Act.
The projectFor Love without Violence: Prevention and Protection from Domestic Violence Through an Information Campaign and Materials in Social Networks and Providing Services for Victims and Perpetrators of Domestic Violencestarted in August 2021 and is a continuation of last year’s project of Bulgarian Fund for Women.
The project is implemented by Bulgarian Fund for Women under a grant agreement with registration № 93-00-243 / 02.08.2021, concluded with the Ministry of Justice.
Photo: Sergey Zolkin, Unsplash
