Smethwick Against Violence Initiative – SAVI project was funded by the West Midlands Police, the Violence Reduction Unit department and was delivered in partnership with the following partners – “EWA”, “R.U.D.A” “Ileys”, “Dog, Duck and Cat”, “FNC”, “Emmergency Communities Community”
R.U.D.A Project name: “Not afraid”
Localities area and authority: Sandwell and Birmingham
The “Not afraid” R.U.D.A project was complementary to the work that we were doing with the Romanian community with the support of their integration in the English society. The project has attracted a great interest from our adult and youth community and showed a real hunger for more knowledge in areas of tackling discrimination, modern slavery, racism, xenophobia and various prejudices that lead to violence which they have been subjected to or witnessed it first-hand.
We created awareness information around the impact of violence in the Romanian and Moldovan Community and effective ways of preventing it by organising series of workshops and webinars for our staff, volunteers (20 people) our youth aged 7-13 yo (15 students) and our online followers (2.8K followers). We builded a social media campaign that was shaped and designed by young people themselves with our support using the narratives occurring during the programme of study and training that they will receive throughout the project delivery. We also used our supplementary school setting to deliver proposed activities as this has been our most efficient and successful model of delivery for various projects we have been involved in since the school opened in October 2020.
Due to most of the project being done online, our followers almost doubled since implementation of the “Not afraid” RUDA project.
Our project culminated in recording and interviewing 2 cases of Romanian citizens who have experienced of violence and exploitation, so their stories can be shared and lessons learnt; but also professionals who work with difficult cases.
Our social media campaign that was shaped and designed by young people themselves with our support was incredibly well received on all our social media platforms.
We worked incredibly well with our partners from the SAVI project, being creative and supportive with each other. Our aim is to continue to raise awareness on the violence reduction in our community by holding training and awareness sessions and encourage people to report violence.
Project Team:
Project Coordinator: Mariana Plamadeala
Supplementary School Coordinator and Young Mentor trainee: Mariana Plamadeala
Operations and Case studies Coordinator:
Ionut Matei
Professional Interpreter and Case studies Coordinator:
Iulia Andrei Gupta
Visual and Social Media Coordinator Elena Plamadeala
