AIDOS Italy Updates

AIDOS is implementing a project to contribute to the protection and support of refugees and asylum seekers survivors of SGBV in Italy, by increasing awareness on rights and services available and improving the capacity of the reception centres’ staff to respond SGBV (including FGM). In the framework of that project, supported by Fondazione Haiku Lugano, in April and May AIDOS organised trainings for psycho-social-legal operators and cultural mediators of the reception centres in Rome, for them to offer advice and support and provide referral to SGBV and FGM survivors. More trainings will be conducted in the next months.

On the 12th of May, AIDOS held a class on “Sexual and reproductive health and Harmful practices” in the framework of the Course for Civil Society Organisation Gender Advisor organised by the University of Padova and Centro Studi Difesa Civile (CSDC) and attended by NGO workers and International Cooperation students. The class provided the occasion to stress the importance of mainstreaming FGM prevention, protection and care in development projects and to screen the short video “De Retour au pays”, produced within the UNFPA/UNICEF Joint Programme supported project “Building Bridges between Africa and Europe to tackle FGM”.

AIDOS is implementing a SRHR component in a Linking relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD) EU project in Burkina Faso. In the framework of that project, during May, 2 trainings of trainers on SRHR including FGM were held in the North of the country. The trainings were addressed to health professionals of the public system and field workers who, in the coming months, will train health field workers on the same subjects in order to increase the access of women and girls to the available SRHR services and to prevent harmful practices such as FGM.