ANA BELLA ESTEVEZ ANA BELLA FOUNDATION SPAIN, ASHOKA FELLOW 2013 http://www.fundacionanabella.org/ https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/ana-bella-estevez PROBLEM SOLUTION One billion women, a third of women globally, suffer from domestic violence, without taking into account the impact on future generations. This occurs in every country in the world, irrespective of age, social and economic status. 70% of children suffering from domestic violence replicate the pattern as perpetrators or victims. Only 14% of victims of domestic abuse in Europe report it to the authorities. In Spain alone in 2013, out of 34 women who were killed by their partners only 5 of them spoke out in advance. Despite the strength of survivor women, the risk of social exclusion and double victimisation is very high, as overcoming violence in a positive way is no easy task, especially when the society and employers are not supportive.
IMPACT So far, over 1100 survivor women have been trained for work and 210 were hired in valuable jobs as Brand Ambassadors rather than for invisible jobs which create double victimization. Through their work, they contributed to the proven economic and social growth of companies such as Danone by decreasing staff turnover from 63% to 2.25% and reducing the absenteeism from 40% to 2%. Ana Bella proved that women who overcome years of domestic violence have the stamina needed to change the world, and become an economic and social force. Over 5000 women have spoken out and overcome violence with the help of the foundation and more than 300 media and public appearances of survivors have been made. In 2013 alone 1,400 direct calls have been answered, 12,000 teenagers have been trained by survivor women and 500 employees from various companies have been trained.
Ana Bella works to empower abused women by leveraging their strengths and capabilities in order to regain self-confidence to begin the separation process from their abuser and get back on their feet after the separation. Based upon the principle of portraying positive testimonies of survivors, Ana Bella is working at three different but complementary levels: creating peer support networks (in 2014 she also launched a new mobile app) partnering with the public administration and private companies to help them reach more women more efficiently (including on the labor market), and influencing mass media. Through Ana Bella Foundation and her Empowerment School, she enables women victims to become changemakers, and instead of focusing on the victims’ physical consequences of abuses, she shows the success stories of these survivors in mass media. The School provides empowerment and inspiration workshops to speak up and come out of their condition of victim towards an active driver of change, as well as a route to a socially valued job where their results exceed by far those of others. For business partners, her foundation offers co-creation models, working with corporate partners such as Danone to shape new, inclusive business models and better and visible job opportunities for survivor women.
VISION Having experienced domestic violence herself for 11 years, Ana Bella aims to redirect negative energy from domestic violence towards empathy and proactivity and completely eliminate domestic violence around the world. She aims to reach 20 million women in 10 years time. Having started in Seville, Ana Bella has expanded her network to five different regions and is also serving women in Latin America, aiming to scale in Southern Europe and then across the whole continent in the next years. For this, she is working
together with other citizen organizations, coordinating the creation of a federation that includes all women’s associations (first in Spain, then at the European level) that adopt the principle of portraying and tapping into the positive testimonies of survivors.
ROADMAP ANA BELLA ESTEVEZ
With the support of