The END GBV in VET project focuses on the creation of an operational office and a comprehensive service for students, trainers (including administrative staff) and parents to increase capacity and awareness to interrupt gender-based violence in the VET sphere. This will be achieved by improving the capacity of students in vocational training schools and all those already listed to deal with gender-based violence. In this context, the END GBV in VET project aims to create a more supportive school environment for students in VET schools on issues related to gender-based violence.

The impact includes:

• 1st Dimension: improved knowledge, policy, and practice of VET students and teachers/staff, as well as interested parents for addressing GBV.
• 2nd Dimension: increased operational capacity of VET institutions through the operation of safe spaces for VET students to receive support, to critically reflect on and speak openly about GBV.
• 3rd Dimension: outreach to VET students through the online support service to support addressing GBV, outreach to VET related stakeholders to increase their knowledge and raise awareness.

Within this whole school approach, collaboration between VET schools and society plays a central role. Moreover, collaboration with NGOs and Public Bodies experienced in the identification and tackling of GBV issues is part of the projects’ objectives. Enhanced society – VET school collaboration significantly improves outreach to vulnerable adolescents at risk of dropping out, as well as to their parents, thus contributing to a safe and supportive VET school environment.

The overall objective of WP2 (Comparative approach on inequalities between and within participating countries) is to provide a detailed understanding/examination of various aspects of gender-based violence (GBV) in VET in the partner countries.

WP2 builds a comparative approach on the disparities between and within the participating countries in relation to gender-based violence in VET through desk research, primary data collection through focus groups and in-depth interviews and the selection of existing best practices to address gender-based violence in educational institutions.

This package aims to establish a needs assessment and policy recommendations that will be used to develop training, pilot operation of the service and dissemination activities.

The specific objectives of WP2 are

– to deeply understand the roots of the problem

– to explore the experiences of the project’s target groups in terms of their capacity to counter gender-based violence

– to identify their needs and gaps in order to develop a targeted training tool that provides practical guidelines on how to report an incident

The research activities foreseen in this WP involve an extensive desk review of literature, public policies and best practices and the collection of primary data through in-depth interviews and focus groups in each VET provider partner of the project.