ASSOCIACAO PORTUGUESA DE APOIO A VITIMA (APAV)
APAV | Portuguese Association for Victim Support APAV is the largest not for profit and charitable organisation in Portugal with 32 years’ experience in providing confidential, qualified and free of charge victim support services to victims of all crimes. APAV believes that the statute of the victim of crime must be fully acknowledged, valued and effective and works to achieve this goal in Portugal and beyond. APAV’s mission is to support victims of crime, their families and friends by providing free and confidential quality services and to contribute to the improvement of public, social and private policies centred in the statute of the victim. With national coverage, APAV provides information on the rights of victims of crime and the functioning of the criminal justice system, counselling and emotional, legal, psychological and social support. In order to do so APAV has 75 community-based services available to victims of all crimes, namely a National Network of 21 Victim Support Offices®; 4 Itinerant Victim Support Teams; 32 Itinerant Victim Support Services; a Victim Support Helpline – 116006; a Safer Internet Helpline; a Network of Shelters for women victims of domestic violence and their children and the Centre for Shelter and Protection SUL for victims of trafficking in human beings; a Specialised Support Network to Families and Friends of Victims of Homicide and Terrorism; the CARE Specialised Support Network for Children and Youth Victims of Sexual Violence and a Support Network to Migrant Victims and victims of racial and social discrimination.
APAV has a 32 years ‘consolidated knowledge on both the phenomenon of gender-based violence and on providing generic and specialist service to victims, including shelter for women and their children victims of domestic violence. Furthermore, APAV has continuously invested in prevention of gender-based violence and domestic violence, particularly through structured prevention programmes targeted to children and youngsters.
Project SERzinho – Raising Awareness and Educating for Relationships in Pre-school is one of the most recent projects where a structure prevention programme was developed and implemented with the core aim of promoting skills for the establishment of positive relationships based on equality, non-violence and respect for diversity among children aged between 3 and 6 years. Through SERzinho it has been prossible to: (i) implement and to evaluate a violence prevention programme for children in pre-school; (ii) build the capacity of practitioners for the early prevention of violence; (iii) promote the exchange and sharing of knowledge and practices between stakeholders in the field of violence prevention. Project SERzinho follows the developed, implementation and evaluation of Project SER – Raising Awareness and Educating for Relationships, where an innovative educational tool in the domain of prevention of domestic violence and gender-based violence was first developed, tageting children aged between 6 and 10 years old, with potential of implementation in the educational and the community context. Throughout the implementation o SER it was possible to develop/implement: (i) the SER Handbook (Raising Awareness and Educating for Relationships); (ii) the “SER Hour: emotional expression workshop” with children between 6 and 10 years old; (iii) workshops for educational professionals; (iv) facilitation of (in)formative sessions for parents and/or guardians; (v) informative kits for parents and guardians; (vi) internal short-term training sessions for staff and volunteers; (vii) evaluation of the social impact of the project and their activities.
APAV’s structured prevention programmes methodologically rely on training and certification of the professionals working, both in school and/or community contexts, with children and youngsters. Investment also relies on building the capacity of future education professionals, which enables a very early on awareness raising to approach themes such as non-violence and human rights in schools. Supervision and monitoring of both professionals and youngsters in implementing the prevention programmes allows a strong promotion of their senses of self-efficiency, increasing the probability of replicating the implementation of the prevention programmes in their professional contexts. Furthermore, all materials that form the prevention programme are developed so that they may be replicated autonomously by the professionals involved.
Contact details:
+351 21 358 7900
+351 21 887 63 51
Rua José Estevao 135-A, piso 1
1150-201 Lisboa, Portugal