From February the 20th to 24th, we hosted a training workshop on preventing gender-based violence in youth life. Funded by Active citizens fund in Greece, the workshop sought to create a learning environment for youth educators to strengthen their capacity in planning, designing, and implementing effective, rights-based, participatory gender-based violence prevention interventions. At the end of the workshop, participants were equipped with the know-how and best practices to strengthen victims’ capacity and work with them to report or expose incidents of gender-based violence at the community level.

To look at the gender-based violence situation in Norway, including domestic violence, we visited Free Legal Aid for Women, to look at how the organisation works with victims to gain insightful awareness in the gap that exist between formal and material law, and the difference between being entitled to a legal right and actually gaining this right. That is, knowledge about women’s actual legal position has to be communicated to society to improve the situation, so the legal aid provided has a broader aim than merely to assist in the individual case. The experiences and challenges met from providing legal aid for many decades, is also used in Free Legal Aid for Women’s political advocacy work.

Then visited Alternative to Violence, organisation that provides psychological treatment for, develops professional knowledge, and disseminates knowledge on domestic violence. The organisation's work is based on the principle that there are alternatives to violence, and that violence is an expression of a personal problem that is possible to receive treatment for. For over 30 years, Alternative to Violence has contributed to increasing the understanding of family violence as a societal problem that needs to be addressed by offering psychological treatment to perpetrators of violence, adult and child victims of domestic violence and teenagers with violence and aggression problems.