Economic empowerment project launched in safe house

Economic empowerment project launched in safe house

During the day, the first practical training in organic production took place, with Professor Dr. Branka Lazic providing instructions. The training was conducted in the greenhouses that will in the future serve as a training center for organic farming within the safe house.

The greenhouses spread on 200 square meters where 2,000 seedlings of different varieties of lettuce and 15 kilograms of onion seeds have been planted.

The front yard has ornamental and medicinal plants and herbs, also grown according to traditional, organic principles.

The planting was assisted by volunteers - employees of CSR, the B92 Fund, the Vojvodina provincial agricultural expert services, Novi Sad's company GEA Llant, consultant Aleksandra Vladisavljevic from the company BIZZ from Belgrade, as well as Milan and Sasa Kostic from MKM Zelenilo Novi Sad, who designed, as a donation, the open garden, and helped plant hundreds of seedlings of medicinal, aromatic and ornamental plants. These activities are part of the project "ONAsnazivanje" which began in December 2013. The aim of this pilot project is to introduce a new service of economic empowerment in Sombor and other safe houses, in order to make them sustainable.

The project is a partnership between the B92 Fund, CSR Sombor, and Smart Collective, funded by UNWomen, and building on B92 Fund's continuous activities to build and furnish safe houses.

Thanks to the new service, the Sombor CSR will be able to provide more permanent assistance to the women victims of domestic violence, since the plan is for the social enterprise "Good Garden" to become a continuous source of income through production and sale of organic greenhouse vegetables.

This innovative model was supported by the Vojvodina Provincial Secretariat for Economy Labor, Employment and Gender Equality, which included the project in a program for economic empowerment of women victims of domestic and partner violence, adopted in December 2014.