GOALSCORE Methodology for coaches

Dear football coach,

Are you working with female football players? Do you want to provide them with valuable knowledge and skills to counteract gender-based violence while training them? Here is how…

The GOALSCORE consortium designed a football methodology whose specific aims are:

1. provide coaches and female players with skills to detect gender-based violence and domestic violence against women;
2. increase awareness and knowledge about gender-based violence and domestic violence against women;
3. increase closeness and empathy toward those who experience violence;
4. promote a sports context that can represent a supportive and safe space to disclose violence which has been experienced or is currently being experienced.

To reach these goals, the GOALSCORE methodology comprises seven activities.

• One preliminary activity is meant for coaches to learn more about gender-based violence and domestic violence against women;
• Six activities are meant to be implemented during the sports season within female football teams – have a look at them!

You can implement some activities or the whole methodology. If you go with the second proposal, try to implement the activities in a fixed order: this is because some of the activities are preparatory to the subsequent ones. All activities come with a detailed description and materials to be printed.

Fight domestic violence with football: find the GOALSCORE methodology below.

Training on combating gender-based violence for Portugal’s Under-16 Women’s Team

FSR holds seminar to raise awareness on domestic violence

By Valhmor Camilleri

Domestic violence is one of the biggest problems that is afflicting our society.

During the past months, there were several cases of women suffering abuse from their husbands or partners and some of them even ended up losing their lives.

In a bid to raise awareness of this major problem afflicting women, the Malta FA, under the Football Social Responsibility Department, organised a half-day seminar for coaches in the women’s football sector at the Centenary Hall in Ta’ Qali.

Peter Busuttil, the director of the Football Social Responsibility department, organised this event as part of the Goalscore project which is an Erasmus+ programme funded by the European Union.

The Malta FA is the lead partner in Goalscore, and it is working in collaboration with the Malta Women’s Lobby, the Portuguese Football Association, the Romanian Football Association, Unimore, Filia, APAV and Euractiv.

The aim of Goalscore is to create awareness of domestic violence and has been on the MFA’s Football Social Responsibility department’s agenda for the past two years.

Chaired by Peter Busuttil, the seminar was attended by several coaches from many clubs that boast women’s teams both at senior and youth level.

Martina Farrugia, who is a researcher and expert on Gender Equality with a specialisation in violence against women, gave a general overview of what was domestic violence.

She said that the majority of the victims in domestic violence were women and the most common perpetrator were men.

Farrugia said that domestic violence could take various forms, such as physical, sexual, psychological and economic.

Other forms of violence include stalking, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, forced abortion and sterilisation.

Femicide is the most serious form of physical violence and unfortunately in the past few months we had some cases of femicide which resulted in women being killed by their partners.

Sexual violence can take the form of women forced into intercourse under the intimidation of physical aggression.

On the otherhand, a person can receive psychological harm in the form of coercion, defamation, verbal insults or harassment.

Farrugia also explained the dynamics of economical abuse which sees a women being restricted access to financial resources, suffers property damage, is prevented from working or could be forced to quit her job.

Added to that there were cases when perpetrators obliged their partners to deposit their salary into their account, seize their debit cards and even force them into debt.

Online violence could take the form of having material, which could include intimate images or videos, being distributed without the consent of the victims

Farrugia said that the perpetrator’s abuse works in the form of a cycle which starts with the honeymoon phase but then tension starts to build before it reaches the ‘explosion phase’.

A worrying statistic revealed was that 21 per cent of women and girls have suffered sexual abuse in a sporting environment – nearly a double of the rate of their male counterparts.

The seminar also featured a first-hand experience of a victim – Elaine Compagno who went on to become the General Manager at Women For Women Foundation.

Compagno related her own experience and said that there are signs to detect when a person is suffering domestic abuse but are not obvious.

She said that one clear sign is when a person loves doing something and then suddenly stops. This could be detected in sports environment when one person, who normally is very punctual for training sessions, suddenly starts missing training.

A number clear sign is if this person seems to be under control of someone else and declines offers to socialise with her team-mates after training sessions or is constantly texting someone on the phone.

Police Inspector Sylvana Gafa also spoke about the support that is being offered to victims of domestic violence.

Gafa, who is the Head of Services at the Victim Support Agency, said that one concerning signs of possible domestic violence could be detected in football nurseries when parents attend to watch their children play.

She said that when one sees a parent beating his children or is continuously shouting and swearing at them puts a lot of stress on the children and could lead to domestic violence.

“When you see children terrified of doing something because of their parents it could be a sign that something is happening at home,” Inspector Gafa said.

She appealed to the participants that if they encounter possible cases of domestic violence to contact the Victim Support Agency for assistance.

On is part, Peter Busuttil said that the next step is now to continue visiting clubs and hold sessions based on creating awareness and to promote the objectives of Goalscore.

In May, a football festival with women’s teams and also mixed gender teams will be held in Malta.

Source: https://sport.timesofmalta.com/2024/02/04/raising-awareness-of-domestic-violence-among-local-football-community/

Antrenori de la cluburile de fotbal feminin, participanți la un training pentru prevenirea violenței domestice în cadrul proiectului GOALSCORE

Antrenori și antrenoare de la patru cluburi de fotbal feminin au participat la un training pentru prevenirea violenței domestice și de gen, organizat de Federația Română de Fotbal în parteneriat cu Centrul FILIA, în cadrul proiectului european GOALSCORE.

Trainingul a avut două componente: prima, prezentată de Miruna Pantel, reprezentantă a Centrului FILIA, a avut ca scop crearea unui context în ce privește violența de gen, pentru a familiariza antrenorii cu noțiunile și felul în care se poate manifesta aceasta, indiferent că e vorba de violență economică, fizică, psihologică, sexuală sau în cuplu.

De asemenea, antrenorii și antrenoarele au aflat și despre cauzele și consecințele violenței asupra femeilor și felul în care aceasta poate afecta performanța sportivelor, în cazul în care acestea sunt victime ale violenței.

Cea de-a doua parte a cursului a constat în prezentarea a șapte activități practice, pe terenul de fotbal, pe care antrenorii le pot folosi pentru a crea un mediu de încredere în cadrul echipelor, dar și pentru a le introduce jucătoarelor noțiunile despre violența împotriva femeilor și a le încuraja să ceară ajutor dacă ajung să treacă prin astfel de situații.

Source: https://www.frf.ro/recomandate/antrenori-de-la-cluburile-de-fotbal-feminin-participanti-la-un-training-pentru-prevenirea-violentei-domestice-in-cadrul-proiectului-goalscore/

Women’s Lobby says not enough being done to give protection to domestic violence victims

The Malta Women’s Lobby reiterated its stand Saturday that the authorities are simply not doing enough to ensure that victims of domestic violence are being given adequate protection and timely justice.

The lobby issued a statement at the end of 16 days of activism held against domestic abuse on the first anniversary of the murder of Bernice Cassar (Cilia).

Despite recommendations of the inquiry into Cilia’s murder, there is still a big backlog in cases, with victims having to wait over a year until their aggressor is summoned in court. With a backlog of 2283 cases, evidently the appointment of a second magistrate to deal with such cases is not enough. What is worse, it has also come to light through the same article*, that the second Magistrate appointed by the Justice Ministry to support the domestic violence caseload, that previously fell solely on Magistrate Lanfranco, is, since September, no longer dealing with domestic violence cases. This suggests that the appointment of a second magistrate was just lip service, and there was never any serious intention of rectifying the caseload situation.

It’s all well and good for the government to launch a national strategy on gender-based violence (GBV) and domestic violence (DV), however, we ask the authorities to bear with us if we’re not quite applauding and clutching our pearls at this news. What’s the point of publishing nicely worded policies if their implementation remains questionable? In normal countries when governments issue a strategy of this importance, it normally starts from a well-defined budget to ensure that the plan can be executed effectively without financial constraints.

Phrases like “sufficiently safeguards victims of domestic and gender-based violence”, promises that measures will be “implemented effectively”, and ensuring that crimes are “prosecuted effectively”, mean nothing until real progress can be tangibly seen to be taking place and someone is held accountable when it’s not materialising, the lobby said.

We’ve had it up to our eyeballs with fancy talk and flashy press conferences that, ultimately, have no real and timely impact on the ones who need it most. So much for “strengthening the resources needed to tackle domestic and gender-based violence is at the forefront of government’s priorities”. Concrete and timely action is what this country needs.

It was also announced that electronic tagging and panic buttons will be introduced, in cases where a person has a protection order issued in their favour with the objective of strengthening the victims’ safety and granting them greater protection. This development was first mentioned over 10 years ago. Let’s hope that we won’t have to wait for another 10 years for its implementation. We stress that it is the duty of the state to protect the victim and the onus should not be put on the victim to request the electronic tagging of the perpetrator.

The MWL would also like to highlight that gender-based violence affects women and girls disproportionally which is why we demand that the term Violence Against Women (VAW) becomes part of the government’s narrative as well as included in any proposed legislation.

Finally, the MWL would like to applaud and salute the indefatigable NGOs who have been demanding progress for years and years. Civil society should not have to demand the most basic of measures from the authorities but should use their expertise and their energy on fine-tuning a system that is in place and working efficiently.

It is beyond disheartening and exhausting to note that the authorities are more interested in holding slick press events to state what they intend to do, yet hardly ever follow up with concrete and significant action.

Violence Against Women is a dark stain on our society, and we demand immediate and adequate protection, as well as justice for all victims of this crime, the lobby said.

Source: https://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2023-12-09/local-news/Malta-Women-s-Lobby-says-not-enough-being-done-to-give-protection-to-domestic-violence-victims-6736257018

“Tante come te” “Many like you”, a project for women by women. 

Our journey started we were assigned to create a presentation for an event held at our university called “Equality week”. 

We were instructed to raise awareness and sensitize our potential audience about why women are considered a minority group that is at a disadvantage in our society. 

We decided that not only did we want to raise awareness but we wanted to take an active role in creating something that could potentially go beyond and that could potentially make a difference. 

So we created a website, titled “Tante come te” “Many like you”, 

This website has been made so that whomever decides to view it can go on a personal journey. 

There is the first section that is called “Non sei da sola” “You’re not alone” which if you click on it will bring you to a open forum where you can post anonymous confessions confiding in a virtual community potentially connecting with others. 

The second section is called “Tu Vali” “You’re valid” and it leads to a blog page where we’ve posted interviews of important women in our region of Emilia Romagna who have taken an active step to help other women get out of violent and/or mentally destructive situations. 

Here we’ll also post updates of festivals, marches and other activities that are constantly being organized to unite our community. 

And the third section is called “Come uscirne” “How to get out” 

Essentially this section is for those who don’t feel necessarily comfortable interacting with others but still needs professional help to explore their options. 

In this section we’ve listed a series of Antiviolence centers, numbers for immediate intervention, and contacts of psychologists and psychiatrists who may help with online sessions. 

Essentially we’ve created a safe space in which women can feel informed and not alone in a world that does leave them at a disadvantage. 

We believe in reinforcing knowledge, helping others understand that there are different types of violence that are equally damaging whether they may be economic, psychological, physical etc. and there are many ways to seek resources and refuge if need be. 

But above all else we underline the importance of awareness so that those who are responsible of sexism may fully acknowledge that women’s rights are human rights. 

Source: https://fredeguidetti.wixsite.com/manuale-di-riconosci