WOMENS SUPPORT CENTER-ARMENIA
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Mission Statement
The Women’s Support Center is the premiere domestic violence center in Armenia dedicated to preventing and combating domestic abuse. We work to protect, rehabilitate, and empower survivors and change the legal, educational, and social conditions that contribute to a culture of silence surrounding DV. We make change in three key areas: improvement of service delivery, prevention, and strengthening of institutional responses.
About This Cause
The Women's Support Center offers a 24-hour hotline, psychological counseling, 2 safe houses, life and parenting skills education, legal assistance, professional training, and other educational programs for women and girls in Armenia, including a successful economic empowerment program. We advocate for women’s rights and mobilize communities to change individual knowledge and attitudes about violence against women. Finally, we work at an institutional level to create community-based protection and accountability systems, enhance the capacity of key decision-makers, and support the implementation of multi-sectoral policies, action plans, and legislation. Annually, the Women's Support Center's 22-member staff provides comprehensive services to roughly 350 beneficiaries, including 160 shelter residents. Today, many of our beneficiaries are living free of abuse and are proud spokespersons for combating DV, which has had a powerful ripple-effect on the larger public. The Women's Support Center has a long history of successful partnerships with the police, ministries, and other government agencies as well as women’s groups and other community-based organizations. We have trained hundreds of police, social workers, psychologists, students, health care providers, and government and civil society representatives all across Armenia to apply best practices and strengthen the institutional DV response. Additionally, we have produced and disseminated social work standard operating procedures, shelter best practices, and a police guideline in collaboration with the Council of Europe. As a result, the Women's Support Center is now considered an expert partner by the Council of Europe and is periodically called on to lead DV training sessions with police and social workers. Our engagement and interventions with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and other key stakeholders have yielded significant outcomes: At the Ministry’s request, we helped draft a 3-year National Action Plan and offered amendments of several sub-legal police orders and legislative articles to make the domestic violence law compliant with the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention. Finally, the Women's Support Center was chosen by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs as lead implementers on a large-scale program to establish domestic violence support centers all across Armenia. These centers are now partially subsidized by the government and have come together as members of the newly established Coalition of Domestic Violence Support Centers, founded and led by the Women's Support Center. Our database structure and intake forms have since been approved as standards, and we are now responsible for ensuring that all domestic violence support centers operate using a standardized approach and work together as a cohesive unit–ultimately enhancing multi-sectoral referral mechanisms throughout the country.