amanda - project for girls and young women

amanda - project for girls and young women ( spelling amanda - project for girls * and young women * ) is a social institution for child and youth welfare in Munich founded in 1978 with a focus on workshops and counseling for girls and young women up to the age of 27 as well as Advanced training for educational professionals.

history

The project was founded in 1978 as the first gender-specific institution for girls and young women in Bavaria . As a model project "Help and self-help for unemployed girls and young women" it was financed by the Bavarian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs until 1984 and in 1984 it was included in the regular funding of the Munich City Youth Office as a "Project for Girls and Young Women".

Social scientists from the primordial cell of the Munich women's movement (Helga Dilcher, Monika Schmidt, Polina Hilsenbeck, Hanna Permien and Annemarie Blessing) in Gabelsbergerstrasse developed and wrote the concept for the model project in 1978, explaining the necessity of emancipatory, partisan work with girls and young women in girls' projects.

The main focus of the project was initially the transition from school to training and work. Rising youth unemployment, which affects girls and young women more quantitatively and qualitatively due to the gender-specific selection of the labor market, was one of the reasons to support the project. As part of the project, the girls and young women were strengthened in their self-confidence and encouraged to take their own wishes and ideas about training and work seriously. This also included critically questioning the narrow range of occupations for young women that is customary in society, actively interfering in so-called male occupations and planning and implementing their own professional career. In addition, there were various offers to develop creative and design skills, to recognize one's own strengths in self-awareness groups, to question the socially established role models and to design one's own life plans. In the beginning there were more and more open offers such as the girls' café, self-help groups and support offers during the transition from school to work and then shifted more and more to seminars at schools and institutions for child and youth welfare.

The thematic focal points are sex education , life planning, health prevention , violence prevention , advice for young pregnant women and young mothers, advice for girls and young women on all situations, as well as political influence in the process of equality between girls and young women. As one of the first institutions for girls and women in Munich, amanda used its employees to work with unaccompanied and accompanied underage refugee girls and young women.

Mission statement, purpose and goals

amanda stands for feminist , partisan work with girls in Munich and is committed to a society that is free from structures of rule that are associated with violence, exclusion, devaluation and hierarchies. Taking into account intersectional entanglements and experiences of discrimination , amanda appreciates girls and young women in their diversity and supports them in developing a self-determined personality - regardless of their religious or cultural values, their physical and cognitive abilities, their gender or sexual identity , their social origin or ethnicity.

One of the main goals of amanda's work is to enable girls and young women to discover their strengths and abilities outside of male competition and to develop a self-determined identity. In addition, various offers offer them freedom in which they can make themselves the subject and subject of history, in order to contribute confidently and controversially to the design of their diverse areas of life.

target group

In the sense of SGB VIII, amanda's target group includes girls and young women up to the age of 27 from all types of schools and educational institutions in the urban area of Munich, as well as their parents and other reference persons, teachers and specialists who work with girls. amanda also works with boys and young men if this is conceptually provided for in joint projects with boys workers or if they are one of the caregivers.

organization structure

Today six women work in the project: five social workers and one administrative worker. Since its inception, the project has been working on a grassroots and self-governing basis. The sponsoring association is the “Association for Psychosocial Initiatives e. V. "(VfpI).

Focus / activities

The focus of work is on gender-specific, differentiated seminars for girls and young women in all types of schools as well as in child and youth welfare facilities on the subjects of sex education, violence prevention, health prevention, media education and career orientation.

amanda offers counseling for girls and young women up to the age of 27 on all psychosocial issues, e.g. E.g. when stressed at school or at home, with questions about career choices and training, relationship problems, when coming out or about pregnancy .

Amanda conducts advanced training courses and workshops for educational professionals on all of the topics offered in the seminars.

Networking

In order to anchor gender-differentiated, emancipatory work as a cross-sectional task in all social areas of work with girls and boys or young women and young men, amanda employees are involved in many topic-specific working groups and committees and repeatedly work on innovative topics and campaigns such as B. the “Munich Campaign against Male Violence against Women, Girls and Boys” (1997–98), the exhibition project “Girls Paradise”, the girls' congress “We're all about it” (2011), the campaign “We're all about it - girls and women for self-determination ”(2011–14), the resulting city council hearing (2013), the campaign for shelters for consuming girls and young women or the“ Love me Gender ”campaign (2017–).

Amanda employees played a leading role in founding the Munich specialist forum for girls * work in 1989 . The draft of the guidelines for gender-specific work with girls for the city youth welfare office was drawn up by an employee of amanda.

Even with the establishment of the State Working Group Girls Policy Bavaria e. V. an amanda colleague was engaged, and since then amanda has also been a member and represented on the board by a colleague.

As part of the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the Munich specialist forum for girls * work in 2009, amanda conceived the school project “Girls and Boys Paradise in Munich”. The results of the gender-differentiated school seminar were summarized in a traveling exhibition and could be shown in the city youth welfare office and at the gender conference in the Gauting Institute for Youth Work of the Bavarian Youth Association .

To mark the 850th birthday of the state capital Munich, amanda started a research project for girls and boys that showed the history of girls and young women as well as boys and young men in Munich. The exhibition project "850 Years of Girls and Boys Life in Munich" was shown in schools, at events and in the city youth welfare office.

amanda supports or supported various campaigns and events, such as B. One Billion Rising Munich , the Slutwalk Munich or the Dyke March Munich .

amanda, together with other Munich institutions, organizes the annual central event for International Girls' Day in Munich.

Awards

In 2018 amanda - Project for Girls * and Young Women * received the Anita Augspurg Prize of the City of Munich for its special contribution to the equality of girls and women.