On 22 May 2024, VSE organised a workshop in Croatia entitled “Understanding the Advocacy Environment Related to Victims’ Rights Related to Victims’ Rights” as part of the EU-funded project BeneVict. It was attended by 24 participants from all around the EU including project partners, decision makers, public authority representatives and victim support workers.
The workshop was dedicated to the first stages of developing an advocacy campaign and combined theoretical components with practical ones. Different stages of developing a campaign were discussed with a strong focus on data collection and assessing the advocacy environment. A summary of the methodology and the main findings of the project BeneVict were presented as an example of building the evidence base for campaigning. Furthermore, two examples of evidence-based campaigning from VSE Members (BOJ in Sweden and APAV in Portugal) were presented.
In the second part of the workshop, participants were split into four groups representing the key problematic areas identified through the BeneVict research: Information, Interpretation and Translation, Support, and Compensation. Participants were asked to respond to questions that will help then analyse the advocacy environment they are working in. They were then invited to share their answers with each other within small groups, discuss challenges, solutions, and exchanging practices. Finally, the participants were invited to a final sharing circle where they could talk about their takeaways from working within their groups.
Participants commented on how much overlap there is in terms of challenges and similarities across different countries and systems. Conversely, one participant shared that it is sometimes frustrating to learn about other countries’ solutions when they are not feasible or scalable in a country with an entirely different system. Many participants expressed their appreciation for the ability to learn from their colleagues and reiterated the importance of building connections and working together toward better outcomes for all victims.
