Centre for abused, disabled women to be launched in administrative centre of south Moldova autonomy

Chisinau, 3 April /MOLDPRES/ - A centre meant for women suffering from violence from the Autonomous Territorial Unit Gagauz-Yeri (UTA Gagauz-Yeri) will be accessible for people with disabilities too. The institution will have an universal design, adapted to the needs of all beneficiaries and will be opened for use till late 2019.    

The centre will be opened based on cooperation between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Comrat (Gagauz administrative centre) administration.

„The future centre will be able to shelter up to six women with children for a period of up to six months. The team of the social service will facilitate the solving of problems faced by women and will contribute to their reintegration into the community. Thus, the centre will provide psychological, social and legal  assistance. If necessary, women will be helped to access also other public services, such as medical ones,” a UNDP project manager, Vitalie, Frecautanu, said.  

For her part, the deputy governor of the Gagauz autonomy, Olesea Tanasoglo, noted that this service was a need for the region. ”Multidisciplinary teams are already working in many settlements, whose task is to prevent domestic violence. Yet, the quality of these interventions will improve considerably, due to the social centre, where each woman will be able to feel in safety,” Olesea Tanasoglo said.   

To learn opinions about the designing and arrangement of the future centre, the programme’s initiators have recently organized an exercise named “user safari.” The latter allows implementing the principle of universal design, accessible for all beneficiaries. Specialists in the social protection, psychologists, representatives of the construction company participated in the exercise.     

According to psychologist Lilia Gorceag, the shelter for eventual victims of the domestic violence will contribute to the settlement of more problems. “Here, women have not only a place for sleeping, clothes and food, but also will be helped to overcome the crisis situation and reintegrate from the social viewpoint,” Gorceag added. 

The initiative of opening a social centre meant for abused women fits into a project titled, Addressing violence against women in Moldova: Exploring and learning from local solutions, implemented by UNDP with the assistance of South Korea during 2018-2020.

Financing worth 90,000 dollars will be allocated for the arrangement of the hosting centre. A campaign of raising money was also launched for supplementing the centre’s budget, through the platform www.sprijina.md.