The Empower Women Project was a collaborative initiative between the Shpresa Programme, a registered charity and refugee community group working with the Albanian speaking community in London and Solace Women’s Aid, a London-based which offers a range of services to women and children experiencing or escaping domestic violence including emergency refuge accommodation, floating support, telephone and face to face advice, and advocacy.
Shpresa Programme works with over 2,000 Albanian speaking refugees and migrants each year to foster integration and to support men, women and children, enabling them to contribute to the communities in which they now live and work. Shpresa holds the London Youth Quality Mark, Gold Award for excellence in their Youth Work provision. It was awarded the Forum for Health and Well Being’s Communities of Health Award for the third year running in 2016 and in September 2018 achieved PQASSO level 2. In October 2016, Shpresa received the Marsh Award for its contribution to the fight against modern slavery, and for its work with trafficked women and children. The Albanian Supplementary School’s Project has been awarded the Special Distinction Award from the NRCSE (National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education) for exceptional all-round high-quality education in teaching and learning; day to day management; and good governance. Furthermore, Luljeta Nuzi, the founder of Shpresa Programme, has received an Honorary Award as Migrant and Refugee Woman of the year in 2012 and a David Crystal Award from the Chartered Institute of Linguists in 2014 in recognition of her work with Shpresa Programme fostering the study of community languages.
Solace Women’s Aid supports women and children in London to build safe and strong lives free from gender based abuse and violence. As an organisation it works to prevent violence and abuse as well as providing services to meet the needs of survivors particularly women and girls. Across its service provision, it aims to be holistic and empowering, to work alongside survivors to achieve independent lives free from abuse. It seeks to achieve these goals by working collaboratively and in partnership with other organisations both big and small. Solace Women’s Aid seeks to work with organisations who support women, children and young people from diverse cultural backgrounds, across all protected characteristics.
Empower Women Toolkit 