FEANTSA Ending Homelessness Awards 2018
Following the success of last year’s inaugural Awards, where three worthy winners were chosen for their innovative use of the European Social Fund to develop projects which made a big difference to homeless people’s lives, this year recognised innovative projects which have been funded by the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD).
FEANTSA hopes that the Awards will be an opportunity to showcase how the FEAD is being used to fight homelessness across Europe and to provide inspiration for other worthy projects seeking financial assistance from this fund. The awards are part of FEANTSA's Be Fair Europe - Stand up for Homeless People campaign, an aim of which is to promote the investment of EU funds in ending homelessness.
Gold, silver and bronze awards were given out in Brussels on the evening of 6 November, following the meeting of the FEAD Network. The gold winner had a short video made about them and all three winners will be invited to present their projects at the 2019 FEANTSA Policy Conference, as well as having their work included in a best practice handbook (see last year's).
Meet the winners:
Gold: Frostschutzengel Plus – jointly managed by GEBEWO and Caritas
This is a service provided in Berlin for homeless mobile German and EU citizens in a range of languages including Bulgarian, Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian, English, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian and Russian. The project provides counselling in existing homelessness services (day centres, night shelters, GP surgeries etc) which allows service users to receive advice and support on location. Service users are also informed of their rights, often for the first time. By offering the support in several languages, clients are able to better make use of social services.
Watch a video about the winner:
Silver: Vulnerable EU Migrants - Kirkens Korshær Kompasset
This Danish service provides outreach services for often hard-to-reach destitute EU mobile citizens, many of whom struggle to access low-threshold services due to marginalisation, mental health issues or substance abuse. This outreach is accompanied by advocacy work: filing complaints, campaigning against the increasing prohibition of sleeping in public spaces etc.
Bronze: Better Health – The City of Gothenburg
This project is a cooperation between Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, the Salvation Army, the Rescue Mission and the Health Centre for Homeless people. Its aim is to provide medical help and advice to vulnerable EU migrants – most of whom are Roma, but some are also from Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Albania and Croatia. Doctors, nurses, nutritionists and midwives go out and map the needs of the service users and provide them with health information.
More information about each project will shortly be available in the form of a Handbook, which will be published before the end of the year. In the meantime, please contact Emma Nolan if you would like to be put in touch with any of the project leaders.
For more news and photos from the ceremony, please consult our Facebook and Twitter pages.
