Center for Girls was founded 15th April 1998, on the initiative of two volunteers of “SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence.” The aim of its foundation was to improve the position of young women in society through their education and emancipation.
Mission of the Center for Girls is empowerment of girls through education, activism and creativity. Vision of the Center for Girls is empowered, confident, strong, safe girls, active in opposeing patriarchy and make decisions about their lives with the possibility for a better position in society. In the Centre for Girls in the past 16 years was implemented a lot of projects, which included SOS helpline, meeting place, workshops, lectures, psychological support, feminist-activist theater, festival. The three main topics which is worked on are: prevention of violence against girls, prevention of trafficking in girls and women’s health. The target group of the “Center for Girls” are girls from 15 to 30 years. “Center for Girls” is a part of three networks: Network of Women Against Violence; Women in Black Network and AT Network Serbia.
From the 2002 we streamlined our work on education of girls in high schools. Till now we held workshops at 13 secondary schools in Nis and its surroundings we held 1.493 workshops with 20.913 participants, on the following topics: Assertiveness and Self-confidence; Prevention of Trafficking in Girls; Economic Empowerment of Girls; Forms of Violent Behavior: Bullying, Mobbing and Stoking; Economic Violence; Prevention of Violence Against Girls; Women’s Health and Sexuality; The Prevention of Anorexia and Bulimia. Workshops with these issues, as well as new ones that arise from the need of girls, are being carried out continuously until today.
From 2014 we are launching ArtFemine festival – Festival of feminist activism and art. With ArtFemine festival we are opening feminist space for networking, empowerment, agency, association of activists, theorists, artists, fellow citizens and guests from the country and the region. A particularly important aspect to which we will pay attention within the ArtFemine festival is connecting and empowering of feminist offspring in the country and the region. We think that festival is very important, because in Nis there isn’t a promoting of women’s art, activism and creativity.
The first ArtFemine festival will last this year four days, from 3rd till 6th July 2014. The theme of the first ArtFemine festival is “Women and the Media.” We would like to shed light on this topic from several angles: how the women are shown in the media, which media are available to women, wath are the new forms of media communication in feminism, as well as wath is the position of women working in the media. Within the festival we planned the following activities: meeting of young feminists in the region, two workshops, lecture, panel, street action, theater play, female party and all activities are related to the theme of the festival.