Girls’ House, Frankfurt

Every year, about 17,000 women in Germany flee with their children to one of the 350 German women’s shelters, i.e. places of refuge for women affected by domestic violence. Violence against women takes many forms: physical, psychological, sexualised or structural violence are just a few examples. According to studies, 40 percent of women in Germany have experienced physical and/or sexualised violence since the age of 16 – however, a far higher number of unreported cases is assumed. Nevertheless, violence against girls and young women remains a taboo subject in our society. This also results in the fact that only every fifth person affected seeks help, often because violence happens within their own family and the victims of violence do not seek support due to fear, ignorance or shame. The various forms of violence against girls have serious health and emotional consequences – often even across generations. In addition, young victims in particular often have difficulties in their personal, educational or professional development and suffer from mental illness.

In the FeM girls’ house in Frankfurt, girls affected by violence are protected, supported and provided with advice. They are shown perspectives for a fear-free, self-determined and equal life.

The project is aimed at girls aged 12 to 17 from the Rhine-Main area who come from a difficult social and family environment and are affected by one of the many forms of psychological, physical or sexual violence. For various reasons, such as poverty, migration, illness or addiction, the parents are not able to support their children in their development, their school or personal problems and their life planning as parents. In Germany, an individual’s success at school is still largely determined by the parental home – educational opportunities depend on social and national family background and are therefore unfair and unequally distributed. Children from socio-economically weak families, children of parents without higher education qualifications and children from families with a migration or refugee background are disadvantaged in the German education system compared to children from economically stronger families. This inequality of opportunities and of rights can have serious consequences not only for the professional future of young women.

The aim of the work of the FeM girls’ house is to support the girls to lead a self-determined life free of violence and fear. In order to be able to help them in the long term, the young women are provided with various offers. Among other things, they can visit the regular girls’ meeting, where various cultural, educational and recreational programs are offered. They can also take part in counselling sessions. The girls receive help with problems at school, questions about sexual orientation, experiences of racism and discrimination or disputes at home or with friends. In acute cases of need, the girls can also find refuge in houses of the girls’ house and live there.

In several volunteering activities together with help alliance the girls and young women are provided with access to educational and professional projects. For example, the girls and young women are given an insight into various job profiles at the Lufthansa Group and learn about the admission requirements. Parallel to this, training courses and workshops on the topics of personality development, self-esteem enhancement and application procedures are offered to help the girls and young women to make a good decision for their professional life and to find a way into the job more easily.

The girls and young women should learn new things and pursue their inclinations and strengths during the various measures. In this way, they are to be motivated for school and education on the one hand and strengthened in their personality and self-confidence on the other. Through the offers in the project, they should develop a perspective for an independent and self-determined life with the aim of standing on their own two feet. In this way, threatening developments such as dependencies of all kinds should also be prevented.