21 Dec Violence against women: The FACE Foundation reveals the results of its Hackathon

On Thursday 2 December, the Agir Contre l’Exclusion Foundation organised its ACTIV hackathon in its offices, inviting several participants from different backgrounds to reflect on the theme of the socio-professional (re)integration of women facing domestic violence.

The challenge of this event was to prototype an innovative solution for collaboration between associations, socio-professional integration actors and companies to promote the return to employment of these women. At the end of the day, a jury deliberated in favour of a solution proposed by the speakers.

Once again, the collective intelligence of the three participating teams proved its worth.

How did we work?

The process was simple: after a presentation of the challenge, the three teams met to take ownership of the issue by interviewing the stakeholders involved in the issue. Each participant was able to meet with four witnesses: L’Oréal, the FACE Seine Saint-Denis club, the CIDFF 93 (a specialized association dedicated to women support) and the delegation for victims of the National Police.

Once the challenge had been assimilated, the teams each devised an innovative solution to meet it and then presented it in 5 minutes to the members of the jury: the Kering Foundation, the Agir Contre l’Exclusion Foundation, the Fédération nationale Solidarité Femmes, the FACE Seine Saint-Denis club and the delegation for victims of the National Police.

The winning project: A network of nursery places to support women victims and isolated women in their job search

During this day, 26 participants with varied profiles (social workers, head of department of an EPHAD, project managers in a guidance centre, national manager of social action at the SNCF, professional integration officers, students, diversity manager, etc.) were invited to reflect on the theme.

Their discussions focused on three main questions:

• Why is the support of women towards employment not sufficient today?
• How can companies be involved?
• How to develop synergies between the different actors involved in the process (associations, support structure, companies)?

At the end of the day’s program, 3 solutions were presented to the jury. The initiatives presented were the following:

• a childcare network,
• an application offering a map of reference actors/programs on the different obstacles to return to work,
• and an integrated support program for women.

After deliberation, the project “Une Place, Une Chance” was finally selected, proposing a network of childcare places for women facing domestic violence. The main objective of this initiative is to free up the time needed for women victims to (re)engage in job search. To be successful, this project will have to be carried out in consortium with all the players: public (town halls), associations (CIDFF, FNSF), companies, in the hope of being able to free up cots for these children. This work will require upstream evaluation of the needs with experimental cities, but also of possible subsidies with the town halls.

What happens next?

The various discussions that took place during this meeting will feed into the daily work of the ACTIV project, which was able to take note of the various ideas (coaching, Mooc on self-esteem, mapping, address book, etc.). They will be integrated into the development of the toolbox which should be available by next March.

While waiting for the projects mentioned to become a reality, the Foundation invites you to read the ACTIV guide on the challenges of the socio-professional (re)integration of women facing domestic violence: ACTIVguidebookEN.pdf (activproject.eu)