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Description
The project focuses on helping single parents to whom it brings information, advice, tips, recommendations to help them better orientate themselves in their new life situation. Practical solutions will facilitate and alleviate the difficulty of the situation. It also comes with civic initiatives aimed at naming and highlighting the need for help, the challenges and obstacles that single parents face in our society. There are up to 150,000 parents in Slovakia today raising their children without the regular help of the other parent. Single parents cannot rely on the help of raising children together or rely on a partner''s earning capacity. They are under psychological, societal and economic pressure. Many parents suffer from failures and self-blame. The enormous overload results in serious mental and health problems.
The project will focus on 2 areas: 1. Capacity building for single parents (sufficient relevant information and the ability to work with them adequately), 2. Civic initiatives focused on areas that affect single parents.
An e-learning platform will also be created, divided into sections: My health and well-being, My children, My relationships, My rights and responsibilities, My finances and future, My work and education, I am a child and this is my world. Inspired by foreign experience (eg https://mylifeandme.opfs.org.uk/), project promoters find it useful to prepare a clearer website with interactive elements. Guides parents and children through tutorials, advice, tips, lectures, interviews, stories - case studies, tests and recommendations on how to manage different life situations and what to do. Parents and children, hereinafter referred to as "users", undergo self-education in the first phase. Users will go through a series of steps to help them find solutions to life situations. The main target group of the project are single parents, children and youth, as well as elected politicians.
Summary of project results
Single parenting comes with multiple challenges that affect both the parent and the child. Those include financial strain, emotional stress and burnout, limited time for parenting and self-care, impact on child’s development, social stigma and isolation, difficulties in establishing routine and stability, mental health challenges for both parent and child.
In Slovakia, single-parent families often face high poverty risks, particularly for those whose co-parents fail to fulfill financial obligations. Policies for child maintenance assistance are missing.
The project We support single parents online had the ambition to be a stepping stone in creating a platform for single parents. At the same time, he set himself the goal of creating a framework document that would draw attention to the problems and needs of fathers and mothers taking care of children and households without a partner.
The project implemented three main activities:
1. Creation and maintenance of the e-learning platform - the platform was successfully created. The project implementers filled it with content, including educational videos. They noted a high interest of the target group in registration. Thanks to the platform, several single parents contacted the One Parent organization with a request to provide follow-up services.
2. Advocacy activities - the result of meetings, negotiations and working meetings is the document "We advocate for the dignified life of single parents". The implementers of the project used it to address the key actors influencing the living environment of these families. Already during the project, as well as to the present, follow-up meetings are held, from which proposals are made to improve their conditions.
3. Updating the website - www.jedenrodic.sk has been updated with new useful information for (not only) the target group. In terms of outputs, it is considered a good result that the number of registered single parents exceeded the plan (in the end there were more than 700 and new registrations are increasing even after the end of the project).
The main result of the project is created and and maintained e-learning platform "My life and me" https://jedenrodic.snazzybee.com/ . The platform is operated as a client zone for registered participants, it is continually filled with updated content, including educational videos.
By the end of the project implementation, there were more than 700 registrations, and the number has been further increasing since the completion of the project.
Summary of advocacy activities (results of meetings, negotiations and working meetings) is provided in the document "We advocate for the dignified life of single parents" (in Slovak).
The organization received this grant as one of the projects in the initial phase of its existence and, in synergy with other activities and offered services, it formed an important basis for starting the activities of the then established organization.