Supporting women in Poland through the ‘Success is ME’ programme
To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. These Better Stories currently cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.
This initiative has been collected by Igor Živković.
Women were severely hit during the pandemic. This includes female professionals and entrepreneurs. Coca-Cola Poland in collaboration with the Foundation Of Success Written with Lipstic (Fundacja Sukcesu Pisanego Szminką) has initiated the programme titled ‘Success is ME’, which aims to support women in Poland and get them active in the labour market.
A myriad of free, online tools to support women
‘Success is ME’ gives tools for learning and self-development. They were developed and made available online during the pandemic, and thus easily accessible.
The programme is a rich and comprehensive offer of workshops, courses and expert advice that allow women to get support, help and expand their competences and knowledge. For those who need in-depth and systematic knowledge, individual mentoring sessions are available.
Among the numerous free online tools is the MyOla application, which includes regularly updated recordings, conversations with psychologists, experts and mentors, meditations and breathing exercises. The application has already been downloaded by almost 17,000 users.
Women who seek free and anonymous legal advice can also count on active support.
It was estimated that over 700,000 Polish women already took an advantage of this initiative, although the impact is not measured.
In the future, the organisers of the initiative plan to launch new activities – an intensive training programme for online businesses which aims to show how a business should adapt to new conditions or how to start a business nowadays.
Fundacja Sukcesu Pisanego Szminką aims to promote entrepreneurial attitudes and comprehensive support for women and young people, providing them with professional knowledge necessary for personal and professional development.