EMMA Közhasznú Egyesület
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : i**o@e***********t.hu
Mission Statement
EMMA Association is a national women’s organization, which works for the fundamental rights and societal equality of women, paying special attention to gender-based oppression, violence against women during the childbearing and childrearing period, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), on the individual, community and social level, with a special focus on vulnerable groups of women. At EMMA Association, we recognise that all people are born free and equal. We reject all forms of violations of human dignity, discrimination, harassment in the workplace or abuse of power. Our aim is to communicate with respect for human dignity, free from abuse of power and harassment, and to create a safe, respectful and secure environment. Dedicated to fostering positive change for women beneficiaries, EMMA Association is committed to resilience, empowerment, and innovation in addressing the diverse needs of women in our communities. Through strategic capacity-building initiatives, and with a focus on systemic progress, our organization aims to empower women to become agents of change within their communities, driving impactful solutions to address pressing challenges. At EMMA Association, we recognize the importance of prioritizing solutions for resilience, particularly to support women in situations of high vulnerability, including those facing discrimination, displacement, poverty, and domestic, obstetric and other forms of gender-based violence violence. In collaboration with our partners and allies, EMMA Association implements a range of programs and initiatives, including peer-to-peer support groups, helpline, on-site support and guidance for sexual and reproductive health services, awareness campaigns, and advocacy efforts. Rooted in the principles of inclusivity, equity, and dignity, our initiative seeks to dismantle systemic barriers that impede women's access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care. By centering the needs and experiences of women, particularly those from underserved communities, our project aims to amplify the voices of marginalized women and foster sustainable change at the grassroots level, through collaborative partnerships, community engagement, and evidence-based interventions. As we look to the future, EMMA Association remains dedicated to the mission of supporting women's rights and empowerment.
About This Cause
Birth Activism In 2011, as a result of our extensive social and advocacy campaign, out-of-institutional childbirth became legalized in Hungary, and independent midwifery services became available for women living in Hungary. Since then, an increasing number of women are opting for this women-centered, evidence-based and respectful form of maternity care. Following years of activities focusing on empowering and mobilizing women to fight for their human rights in childbirth, in 2016, we reached a breakthrough: a new grassroot movement rose in Hungary. The Movement for Respectful Maternity Care has been mobilizing tens of thousands of women in several coordinated online campaigns, public protests and events, and obstetric violence has become an inescapable subject of public discourse. EMMA Helpline The EMMA Helpline is one of the earliest activities of our Association, launched in 2015 to respond to the needs of women and mothers who came to us for reliable information and emotional support about childbearing, childbirth and motherhood. The EMMA Helpline aims to provide accessible (even anonymous) information to help women make informed choices, to listen to their experiences, to support them in processing their experiences and to empower them to cope with difficulties in a non-judgmental way. The Helpline is operated by our trained volunteers, they receive calls and emails. In many cases an empathetic conversation is enough, in others the aim is to find the right professional, which we can support through our internalreferral processes. The most common topics are: the difficulties of becoming a mother, traumatic experiences in maternity care, obstetric violence and relationship difficulties. Feedback suggests that women who turn to the Helpline are improving their mental health and becoming more resilient to face their difficulties. EMMA Hubs In 2015, we created EMMA Hubs because we believe that the only way to change the outdated, painful and humiliating system of maternity care is for women to starttalking publicly about what happened to them. EMMA Hubs are local groups for women supporting women’s activism with a focus on motherhood, led by a trained facilitator with substantial knowledge on the area, where women learn and get support from their peers through experience-exchange. Our aim is to empower women by enabling them to make responsible, informed decisions, represent their own interests and give feedback to the relevant system. Besides, we address the structural problems of maternity care, and work toward a system of care (in Hungary and the East-Central-European region) that is woman-centered, based on scientific evidence as well as respecting women’s choices and personal integrity. We emphasize the ways how gender, ethnicity, ability or socioeconomic status can affect women’s reproductive lives, and we fight against obstetric violence in their complexity. Community Peer Support Network Roma women with disadvantaged backgrounds are more vulnerable to obstetric violence, their reproductive rights can be cumulatively violated in the absence of adequate information and training. EMMA Association has developed a model-program with local Roma women, a community doula service for disadvantaged women in North-East-Hungary to prevent these problems. Trained community doulas provide free support to pregnant girls and women who wish to have a companion during childbirth. The innovation of the project is that it includes the support of peer women within a Roma community in a small town in Eastern Hungary - in a particularly vulnerable situation in women's lives: during pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period. Local Roma women take on a supportive role and advocate for their fellow women in the hospital and in the delivery room, and by their presence in the institution they also help to prevent obstetric violence and the discrimination that often occurs. The project and the conversations between women in the community leads to women becoming more aware of sexual health, reproductive rights and violence against women. Moreover local women recognise the importance of women's solidarity and learn to express their demands outside their community, in otherinstitutions. Humanitarian Programme In February 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, millions of people left Ukraine within a short period. The moment Ukrainian refugee women and girls arrived in Hungary, the staff of EMMA Association knew immediately that these women would need help in navigating the Hungarian health care system in order to access sexual and reproductive health services. The majority of our beneficiaries are Hungarian-speaking, underserved, Roma women from the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, however all throughout the program we have included non-Roma, mostly middle-class Ukrainian-speaking women as well. Over the past two years, our initial actions evolved into a complex case management-based humanitarian programme, with 6-8 field workers providing a variety of services to nearly 1000 women. Our case workers help the beneficiaries to orientate in the healthcare system, provide information on prenatal care, labor and birth and contraception options after birth, also abortion care in the case of crisis pregnancy. Our Humanitarian Programme, based on complex case management and fieldwork, has been discontinued, but we remain committed to helping refugee women from Ukraine with their sexual and reproductive health care. Therefore, in the following, refugee pregnant women and women with young children arriving in our country from Ukraine after 24.02.2022 - whether they have temporary protection asylum status or are dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizens - can contact us if they seek information about navigating on and accessing care in the maternity care system, or administrative difficulties related to motherhood such as registration of newborn babies, registration of their nationality. Research and Advocacy In 2022-2023, we carried out qualitative research focused on gathering information about the needs, challenges and concerns experienced by women human rights defenders and civil society organizations in Hungary who work to advance women’s rights or assist women to obtain sexual and reproductive health care or SGBV services. We also focused on the topic of activism related to motherhood, which was another subject of a qualitative research to find answers to the questions of what additional difficulties and needs motherhood hides within women's activism. We conducted qualitative research analysis related to our Humanitarian Programme, focusing specifically on the difficulties of Roma refugee women and girls from Ukraine in accessing SRHR services. Our advocacy efforts focus on the systemic failures that adversely affect all people seeking care in Hungary. In the past years we have built solid communication channels with various stakeholders (including officials, policy-makers, NGOs and INGOS) on the local, national and EU level. We would like to call attention to long-standing challenges faced by underserved and vulnerable groups of women, such as obstetric violence, discrimination, institutionalized sexism and racism, and also the backlash against human rights defenders in general, and women’s rights CSOs specifically.