MiniGrant: WenDo workshops for women with sensory disabilities and women supporting them.

 

About the group

Women who form the group are active and with their attitude they want to break the prevailing stereotypes: we want to show others that disability, although not an easy experience, does not mean passivity.

The Sensorically Sensitive group consists of women with sensory disabilities of sight and hearing (i.e., deafblind, deaf, hearing impaired, blind, and visually impaired women) and women supporting them – assistants and volunteers. These are women vulnerable to marginalization, violence and cross discrimination both on the basis of gender and disability. The group organizes workshops, meetings and various types of activities and empowering events in order to support each other, but also to change the social awareness of disability. The basic value for Sensorically Sensitive is the self-determination of women with disabilities.

Many women with disabilities, as we learned during our meetings, conversations and activities in previous years, often do not know that they have the right to disagree at all, to say “no” when they do not want to do something! For fear of rejection and exclusion, they are often afraid to oppose…

 

 

About the action

The group will organize WenDo workshops for women with sensory disabilities and women supporting them, which will be translated into Polish Sign Language. During the two days of the workshops, participants will not only learn self-defense techniques, but also assertiveness, they will also meet other women who experience similar problems – male domination, lack of faith in themselves, fear of being themselves and expressing their needs. Thanks to participating in the workshop, the participants will receive tools that they will be able to use in everyday life. This is especially important because women with disabilities, on the one hand, are particularly vulnerable to physical and mental violence and lack of a sense of agency, and on the other hand, they have difficult access to many workshops and training that they would like to take advantage of – such as WenDo.

 

Grant amount: 5300 PLN

photo: Agnieszka Majnusz