Slovene Union of University Women

SUUW is very active and will continue to put even more stress on research and campaigns on fight against violence upon educated women, equal pay for equal work, promoting better educational and employment opportunities for young graduate women, we organize cultural and artistic programs tailored to young women and girls with socio-economic difficulties as well as groups of migrant women, women as well as young women with disadvantaged background and who are coming from conflict zones. Since 1997 we’ve been also working towards reconciliation of family life and professional obligations of women. SUUW was the first national affiliation to come out with this project which is now very much in focus of all women’s organizations. SUUW has been implementing actions that foster social rights and commitment of youth, girls in particular. We collaborated in a project Revealed Hands, run by Slovenian design group OLOOP which focused on capacity building workshops. This collaboration stimulated my interest in working with vulnerable groups. Revealed hands was created jointly with a group of immigrant women from ex-Yugoslavia, living in Jesenice, Slovenia. Women came to Slovenia due to various life stories, coincidences and their country situations. They were united through a passion for textile handicraft, financial independence and socializing outside the family environment. The main objectives were to create intercultural connections, educate through textile manual work, socialize and generate textile group of women in Jesenice. I worked as advisor on human rights issues and the entire process demanded a lot of patience as well as carefully selected mindful and tolerance practices as we worked with vulnerable groups. From 2013 until 2015 we were partner in Grundtvig funded project with 4 other European partners on Domestic Violence met by Educated Women at my organisation SUUW. We co-organised and facilitated a conference on domestic violence held at the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana in November 2014. On 11 April 2012 we coordinated an international colloquium “Women holding leading positions in Higher Education in Slovenia: Overcoming barriers – real or imagined”, held at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. We also collaborate in the area of women entrepreneurship and a few years ago we conducted reseach on the impact of crisis on young women graduates in cooperation with META - Association for Women Entrepreneurship; and on the relation of domestic violence and employability of young women. In 2016-2017 we were partner in the international project EUbyCITIZENS, run by Maison de l’Europe de Paris. In 2018 we were partner in MANGO project - Management of Non Governmental Organisations, run by the United societies of Balkans from Thessaloniki. In 2020 we are part of “D’ING - Designing for our Learning // From complexity to simplicity” project, run by Stiftung »Europäische Jugendbildungs-und Jugendbegegnungsstätte Weimar«. We are currently waiting for results of two aplications: Fostering awareness of skills for entrepreneurship of young women (F.A.S.E.) coordinator Academia Studio Italia (Erasmus plus project) and I (don’t) see you – towards stronger representation of women and under-represented groups in leadership, institutions, and media , coordinator CGE Erfurt e.V. (CERV program).