…IZ KRUGA – VOJVODINA is one of the organizations with its contact data and description of services it provides to women with and without disabilities experiencing gender based violence enlisted in the publication entitled ‘A Guide to Organizations Providing Assistance and Support to Victims in Serbia’.
The Guide, presented on a regional meeting concerning crime victims in Serbia held in Novi Sad on 15 May, was one of the three publications issued within the framework of the Raising Awareness on the Victim’s Rights in Serbia Project of the Victimology Society of Serbia. The goal of publishing the Guide denotes a wish to provide a more efficient – faster and more effective – access to information available to victims in their immediate surroundings both to crime victims in the Republic of Serbia and institutions and organizations getting in touch with them in order to develop their communication with victims. The meeting was therefore a chance for professionals from welfare centers, regional courts and public prosecutors’ offices, civil society organizations and human rights institutions to share their experience with the representatives of the publisher of the Guide.
The second publication presented was ‘A Guide to the Serbian Criminal Justice System’. It contains simplified explanations of key terms, proceedings before relevant authorities and their possible outcomes aimed at information of persons who have decided to report crimes committed against them. The meeting attendees found the third, online publication, aka an interactive map of organizations and state institutions providing support to victims, the most attractive. Besides a possibility to search it by an organization’s or institution’s location, name, profile and type of its services available to victims, the map offers its users contact information, details about the field of work, target groups, as well as types of support provided by tens of organizations and institutions.
Referring to years of experience of …IZ KRUGA – VOJVODINA organization in working with women experiencing domestic and partnership violence during the discussion, as well as her own experience in human rights promotion, Ankica Dragin, the PR Manager of …IZ KRUGA – VOJVODINA, pointed to certain technical and accessibility aspects of the interactive map and possibilities of its promotion. The meeting organizers and participants supported the suggestion to provide users of the map with as simple as possible a way to send messages to support-providing organizations by means of this map, recognizing also the need to promote it in online ads and the social media. An especially welcome suggestion was to create a special smartphone application for an increased accessibility of the map, with no need to access it via Internet browsers.
Prepared by Ankica Dragin
