Fight Your Way

Name of the activity: Fight Your Way

Country/NMO: Bosnia and Herzegovina (BoHeMSA)

Program: Gender Based Violence

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign. Combination of education and advocacy. Campaigns create awareness in society about a certain topic (education aspect) and try to funnel this awareness into pressure on the decision makers to adapt policies accordingly (advocacy aspect).

General description:

“Fight Your Way” is a self defense course for women, organized by BoHeMSA – Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is implemented in April, which is globally known as a month dedicated to fighting against sexual violence against women. The main goal is to prepare women for potential dangerous situations they could find themselves in, in order to decrease the number of victims of this type of violence.

“Fight Your Way” is a course facilitated by professional fighters ans certified self defense trainers, who teach women the basic moves of self defense, which are easy to follow and easy to learn. The course also includes the part where women are supposed to understand the importance of psychological aspects of defense, which are checked through practical exercises.

Our project can also be considered as a campaign whose goal is to raise awareness in a country where sexual violence is a common problem.

Focus area:

Sexual violence against women

Problem statement:

Sexual violence against women is a huge social problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which affects over 55% women in our country. With this activity our NMO members want to make an impact by raising awareness as well as stepping forward by making concrete steps.

Having organized a self defense course for women, BoHeMSA was able to provide safety and self-confidence to a large number of women in Sarajevo, who use to feel unsafe and terrified by doing some simple everyday activities.

Target groups:

General population, Women

Beneficiaries:

General population, Medical students, Women

Objectives and indicators of success:

1) To train women and to teach them the basic moves of self defense. (Indicator: Practical skills achieved and tested by professionals – members of Academy of Fighting Arts “Bushido” Sarajevo).

2) To help women maintain psychological stability and calmness in potential critical situations. (Indicator: conducting psychological tests.).

3) To raise social awareness about gender based violence. (Indicators: Number of appearances in mass media; Social surveys.).

Methodology:

First of all, the main part of our activity is to organize the self defense course for women. The course facilitators are the professional fighters and certified trainers from this field. Our target groups are women from general population, usually citizens of the capital city of BiH – Sarajevo.

The course provides the basic self defense moves every women should and can learn, regardless of their fitness level. By the end of the training, facilitators and trainers would check the achieved skills.

Each course has a part dedicated only to the psychological stability of women in dangerous situations. The trainers share their advice, tips and teach the participants several breathing exercises which can be helpful in critical moments.

After finishing the course, we inform the media about our project and activities, but also conduct an online educational campaign in order to show the community the potential problem solution and the progress which can be made in no time.

Plans for evaluation:

Monitoring and evaluation of our project include professionals that help us reach our goals. First, we have certified self defense trainers that check the skills women achieved through our activity, so they write an inform about the progress that is noted. They also give us the tips we could use by reimplementing the activity.

Our project also includes testing the psychological competence of women that participate, through several different tests and exercises. Every women gets a special advice, dedicated only to her, in order to show her the weaknesses she should work on.

As mentioned before, one of the main goals would be to reach a large part of population, in order to raise social awareness. The success indicator would also be one of the monitors for this project – the number of appearances in mass media.