The DAPHNE III project GEAR against IPV - “Gender Equality Awareness Raising against Intimate Partner Violence" is a coordinated action of primary prevention of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) through interventions in the school setting aimed at raising secondary school students' awareness by specially trained teachers.
The aim of the GEAR against IPV project is to promote the development of healthy and equal relationships between the sexes and the development of zero tolerance towards violence by raising students' awareness on:
- the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships
- the influence that stereotypical attitudes and socially imposed gender roles have on their relationships
- how power inequality between the sexes is related to psychological, physical and/or sexual abuse against women/girls and
- how adolescents can contribute to the prevention of all forms of gender-based violence.
The educational system, at all levels, is the ideal setting for such an effort, where properly trained teachers can play a key role in the implementation of similar interventions. However, the problem of IPV and the manner in which gender stereotypical attitudes contribute to the phenomenon, are rarely integrated -or at least non-systematically- in school activities. The GEAR against IPV project is a proposal for systematic intervention in the school setting, where girls and boys are invited, through a series of interactive activities, to assess and -if necessary- to challenge their culturally "inherited" gender stereotypes and to approach differences between genders as individual differences rather than as characteristics of superiority of one gender over the other.
The Main Activities of the GEAR against IPV Project
- To achieve its objectives, the GEAR against IPV project developed a complete educational material, which can be used to train teachers (Booklet II) and to implement awareness raising Workshops for students (Booklets III and IV); the material has been developed in such a way that it can be used as a model for the development of National Packages for use in different countries. More specifically, during the Project:
- the Master GEAR against IPV Package, comprised of four booklets (available in English), was designed and evaluated and
- 4 National GEAR against IPV Packages (Austrian, German, Greek and Croatian), were developed after translation, completion and cultural adaptation of the GEAR against IPV Master Package's four booklets
- Additionally, the following informational material were created:
- 4 leaflets for use in the 4 countries and one in English
- 6 bookmarks with SOS lines for the student population in the 4 countries and one in English
- Teachers' Training Seminars have been conducted and evaluated in Austria, Germany and Greece, which aimed to train teachers on gender equality and gender-based violence as well as to provide the knowledge and skills related to the methodology for implementing the GEAR against IPV Workshops in secondary schools
- GEAR against IPV Workshops, using experiential activities for raising awareness on gender stereotypes and preventing teen dating violence, were implemented and evaluated with secondary school students in Austria, Germany and Greece.
(the GEAR against IPV educational material and all other outputs are available here)
The DAPHNE III project “Gender Equality Awareness Raising against Intimate Partner Violence” (“GEAR against IPV”) [JLS/2008/DAP3/AG/1258], runned from December 2009-December 2011 and it was funded by the European Commission (80%) and partner organizations (20%). The project's coordinator was the European Anti-Violence Network (Greece) and partner organizations were:
The Associate partner in the project was CESI - the Center for Education, Counselling and Research (Croatia) and the External Evaluator of the project was Professor Carol Hagemann - White.
For more information please contact:
European Anti-Violence Network
Tel.: 0030 210 9225491