Winter 2020 Update from ‘White Circle Croatia’

Overview of 2019

1. Starting April 5th 2019. WCC embarked upon a European Social Fond project – „School for life“ UP.02.1.1.06.0066. Our goal in this project is to provide support for social inclusion and employment of marginalised groups. So far the project is on a great course and our beneficiaries are attending their schools ready to make a change in their lives.
2. On June 3rd to 5th 2019. WCC had a Technical visit, 2nd partners Meeting and Workshop in Bilbao, Spain regarding the PROVICTIMS – the role of the Public Prosecution in the promotion of victims rights project. We exchanged a lot of experiences with our Partners from Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
3. On July 2nd 2019. WCC organised an initial working meeting with our partners Centre for Social Welfare Split, Centre for Social Welfare Omiš and Association for Victim and Witness Support Vukovar regarding our „School for life“ project.
4. On september 2nd 2019. psychologist Paula Herceg has joined our team adding even more social services to our repertoire.
5. From September 16th to 17th 2019 our president Livija Plančić attended Executive Board Meeting in Brussels and was nominated for the Member of the Board. There was a discussion regarding the updates and activities of all members.
6. On September 25th 2019. on the premises of the Faculty of Law Split we held a conference „Abuse over the elderly“ . We spoke about the phenomenon of elder abuse, which makes up a considerable part of the population in Croatia, and numerous studies have shown that violence against them is much more widespread than assumed. Among the speakers were prominent names such as Branka Žigante Živkovic – judge of the Zagreb High Misdemeanor Court, Ljiljana Stipišic – judge of the Split County Court investigation, Pasko Ugrina – head of the Prevention Department of the Split – Dalmatia Police Directorate and Petar Škrmeta as representative of the Split Center for social welfare. They spoke about current topics in their field of work, which brought the present participants closer to the problem of all aspects of violence against older persons, as well as possible ways of prevention.
   
7. On October 17 and 18, 2019, we held the first module of education “Application of the model of social mentoring in working with marginalised groups” within the project “School for life” – Support to social inclusion and employment of marginalised groups UP.02.1.1.06.0066. The second module was held on November 7th-8th, 2019. Upon completion of the training we have new social mentors who will continue to apply this service in their work as well as to spread it to others.
   
8. From November 14-15, WCC attended the Technical Visit, 3’rd Partners Meeting and Workshop in Dublin, Ireland regarding the PROVICTIMS – – the role of the Public Prosecution in the promotion of victims rights project. We discussed the development of the questionnaire for Public Prosecutors and the translation to Croatian and Spanish.
9. On November 19th 2019. our president Livija Plančić has been unanimously elected for the new mandate in the Executive Board Victim Support Europe during the Autumn Conference in Brussels. Livija discussed the state of the implementation of Victims Directive to Croatian legal system as well.