Organizer: Fundació Surt.

Collaborative institution: Ramon Molinas Foundation.

Implementation schedule: 01/01/2014 – 31/12/2014.

Opening Doors, a project to help women at risk of social exclusion

Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors) is a social care and empowerment programme aimed at women in situations of poverty. It seeks to be a useful tool for those women who use the Surt Foundation and who have lost their support networks and feel vulnerable. The essential aim of the programme, that has assisted 150 people this year, is to improve the quality of life of the beneficiaries using empowerment strategies.

To foster the social inclusion of the women participating in the programme, firstly, the Surt Foundation holds a series of social care tutorials in which the urgent needs of each of the beneficiaries are examined. Once this has been performed, the organisation schedules individual sessions in which the women are advised about procedures, given personal guidance or helped through financial or food contributions.

Once their more urgent needs have been met, and the individual situations have been examined, the Surt Foundation places them in group empowerment sessions in which they define their life action project. In this they describe their own personal, health, relationship or professional action plan. They outline what they would like to achieve. To finalise the process of the programme, the beneficiaries participate in professional guidance workshops in which they learn about the labour market, job-seeking techniques and basic computer skills. In addition, the Surt Foundation provides them with the possibility of carrying out work experience in companies, via its solidarity network.

Opening Doors also offers the possibility to access to social inclusion housing. The entity offers seats to the beneficiaries to live in a flat, for a temporary stay, which helps to keep a stable situation while following the program.

The beneficiaries of the program

The profile of the women who take part in the Opening Doors program is very similar. The program gives an answer to situations of emerging poverty in which many of the Fundació Surt users are. The beneficiaries of the program are in long-term unemployment, girls from families where the socio-economic context has impacted heavily, single-parent families, and women without a network and totally unconnected to support resources.

Fundació Surt, an entity with more than 20 years of experience

Fundació Surt was born in 1993 as Associació de Dones per a la Inserció Laboral (Association of Women to the Labor Market). Its aim was to facilitate the process of incorporating women to the labor market, especially those who because of their social, cultural, or personal situation were in a position of greater vulnerability. 14 years later, in 2007, the association became Fundació Surt.

Nowadays, the entity wants to become a socially transformative project, committed with women in their effort to build a society with gender equity; a society where men and women are equal in rights and opportunities, without discrimination or subordination.

The consequences of the crisis, the main reason of the program

Following the crisis, Fundació Surt started to receive demands from people who were in critical economic situations, a fact that drove them to poverty and vulnerability, along with their families.

The profile of the applicants was the same: people who not long ago were economically self-sufficient but suddenly found themselves with a lot of difficulties to satisfy their basic needs. Many of them came to Fundació Surt without any resource or network, and were blocked by the impact of their new situation, with consequences that went beyond their economic situation.

To palliate this situation, the programs Open Doors to the Future and Opening Doors were created, programs where people who are within this profile of poverty and social exclusion are assisted.

Links of interest:

Fundació Surt website.