Freasco.eu

PROJECT

BACKGROUND

Project Start Date: 01/01/2021
Project End Date: 31/12/2022
Project total duration: 24 months

Gender-based violence in and around schools refers to acts or threats of sexual, physical, or psychological violence conducted on the basis of gender norms and stereotypes. According to the research, harassing attitudes and behaviors are observed every day in school contexts, both towards females and homosexual people, with aggressors and victims being both students and teachers. In reality, some studies show disturbing data on sexual harassment, sexual violence, and harassment in schools, indicating that these forms of discrimination are widespread.Sexual harassment is especially common in school and university settings, especially among those over the age of 15.

At the moment, there is no established system of procedures and ways of intervention to deal with concrete hazards of molestation behavior and their terrible repercussions in the event of online distribution, at least in the nations included in the FREASCO initiative.

As a result, a standard support methodology at the school and university level is now critical in order to ensure effective precautionary and preventive measures and intervention methods in the face of sexism, sexual, and homophobic harassment hazards.

The European ESHTE project has highlighted the importance of taking a system-wide approach to developing policies and procedures for responding to incidents of gender-based violence against female students, as well as ensuring that a variety of well-publicized supports are available on campus for victims/survivors and developing a clear, accessible, and representative disclosure response for incidents.

Mission

FREASCO will create and distribute a set of tools to assist schools and universities in combating sexism and sexual harassment, including:

  • A multilingual online self-assessment tool for schools and institutions that includes an interactive catalog of open educational resources;
  • A quality label for schools that meet minimal requirements, with tools and resources for anonymous incident reporting;
  • Advice and best practices for developing sexism and sexual harassment policies in schools;
  • Guidelines for capacity building and online support for contextualized organizational empowerment based on school staff strengths and capabilities.

OBJECTIVES

This project’s overall goal is to create a new inventive mechanism that combines and synchronizes the best existing tools and approaches with a digital solution. This method will assist educational institutions, universities, and their personnel (both teaching and administrative) in recognizing and preventing stereotypes and gender-based violence, specifically sexism, sexual harassment, and homophobic violence, in their daily work. The following are the specific objectives (which help to attain the overall objective):

  1. To raise awareness and encourage the avoidance of sexual harassment, stereotyping, and homophobic discrimination among teachers, staff, students, and their families, as well as to eliminate unconscious bias among teachers, staff, students, and their families.
  2. To create and disseminate effective tools for teachers and employees in the field of sexual harassment and gender-based violence detection and prevention.
  3. To monitor and improve the state of gender-based violence prevention strategies in European schools and institutions.
  4. To increase the importance of school and university personnel in the battle against sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

Deliverables

  • Collection and review of good practices and tools already available
  • Online Assessment tool
  • Database of best practices
  • Guidance towards existing best practices
  • Guideline of Quality Label
  • Report of capacity building activities and main outcomes
  • Report of testing activities and main outcomes
  • Memorandum of Understanding
  • Factsheet of FREASCO