
On the 26th of September, the Advisory Board for 2G4V met online for the second time to discuss the project’s progress and gather experts’ feedback on the research report and the first drafts of the Individual Needs Assessment (INA) and Organisational Self-Assessment (OSA) tools that Women’s Room and APAV have been working on, in close collaboration with the partnership.
Members of the Advisory Board agreed that the main challenge in developing the tools consists of striking a balance between their inherent comprehensive nature and the specific objective of identifying gendered elements of organizational set-up and individual needs assessment in the context of gender-based violence and domestic violence. Feedback aimed at ensuring the high quality of these tools and involved discussions on their design, content, and use. The comments were taken on board and will be addressed in the next month for further discussion. .
The EU Research Report was acknowledged by the Advisory Board and partners as a crucial element in the development of the INA and OSA tools and vice-versa. However, the absence of research findings on the specific gendered needs of gender-based violence and domestic violence victims represents a common challenge. In this context, the vital role of the partnership, strategically composed of both generic and specialist victim support organisations, was also emphasised as a source of reliable information and experience able to propose and validate results in the absence of other research data.
Victim Support Europe established a series of meetings with APAV and Women’s Room to ensure frequent communication and alignment on content-related issues, the first one taking place on 08 October 2024 online. All partners were invited to join, if available, to agree on a shared and operational understanding of “gender-sensitive approach” to inform both the tools and the research.