In Dijon, the Amis’ Mots association offers training to rebuild
How to rebuild after domestic violence? In Dijon, the Amis’ Mots association organizes training, in particular for women victims of domestic violence. Its president is our guest this morning.
Sylvie Verquère, the primary goal of your association is language learning, whether French for foreigners or foreign languages for French. How did that lead you to offer training for women?
We realized that there was a real need and a deepening. We do training to offer something multidisciplinary. And the public are women who are far from employment and any woman, I would say young or less young, who need to rebuild a professional project.
And so among these women who follow this training called Starting Over. And there are women victims of domestic violence, family violence. How does this training help them?
Well, it helps them to rebuild themselves, to build a new professional project. Because, very often, they had to settle a number of extremely difficult things to live with. And at some point, they have to rethink their project, and sometimes, for some of them, earn a living while they are far from employment. And so, this training aims to restore confidence, to relearn how to learn in sometimes fundamental subjects such as French or maths. There is also personal development and individual coaching, precisely to help them regain confidence and rediscover themselves through learning that they will use elsewhere in the context of this training which also targets group dynamics and who propose halfway through, since this training lasts twelve weeks, to do a collective project and to work together on a project that they will carry out until the end of the training.
How are these women victims of violence brought to push the door of your association? Do other associations redirect them to you?
Yes quite. And so there are many prescribers. There is Pôle emploi of course, local missions. But there is also Solidarité Femmes, for example, which regularly sends women to us. We meet them and then we explain the training to them. And to tell you, there are two sessions that will start soon in two weeks. Five of them are from Solidarités femmes.
We went for a ride this morning on France Bleu Bourgogne at the MPS, the house of protection for the families of the gendarmerie. Do you have the impression that the reception of women victims of domestic violence is improving in Côte d’Or at the moment?
I think yes. There are efforts being made and globally on aid. And there are several associations, there are state services etc., which really try to help them get out of it. So actually I think they are getting better and better support.
What do you think is still missing today? And according to the women you can meet in training?
This is a difficult question. I think you really have to take the person as a whole and see all of these problems. They are sometimes multiple and it is difficult to create different services. We try to do it precisely in this training since personal development, coaching, is really something they need. And and after this training which lasts twelve weeks, it’s a time, it’s a kind of airlock. We often speak of a springboard for them as well. And during this time, the women who are together can meet up, talk about their problems, exchange views. There is a kind of solidarity between them too.