International Women’s Day 2019 – RAJA supports TafF in Karlsruhe
4min read
08/03/2019
A glance at the calendar shows it: 08 March is International Women’s Day!
The day is also called International Women’s Day, United Nations Day for Women’s Rights or International Women’s Day. On this day, many women, organisations and associations around the world will campaign for more women’s rights and general equality.
The 8th of March is not the day of "woman", but the day of "women". The plural is significant. Because it also expresses the diversity of women
Origin and history: Since when has International Women’s Day existed?
International Women’s Day looks back on a long tradition: it originated around the First World War in the struggle for equal rights and the right to vote for women.
At the suggestion of the German social democrat Clara Zetkin, International Women’s Day was first celebrated in August 1910 at the Second Congress of the Socialist International in Copenhagen. The first International Women’s Day was then organised in Germany and some neighbouring countries on 19 March 1911. Here, more than a million people already stood together against discrimination and for the equality of women. Among other things, they demanded that women be allowed to hold the same offices as men and to vote. Since 1921, International Women’s Day has taken place annually on 8 March. Finally, in 1977, the UN General Assembly officially recognised 8 March as International Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day – what moves today?
In many places, gender equality is the topic of events on 8 March, because women are still often disadvantaged in many areas of life. This also emerges from a recent study by the organisation UN Women: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is completely dedicated to this topic. Under the motto “Turning promises into action”, it calls on politicians to take more action to strengthen the position of women and girls. For it is usually they who are affected by poverty, climate change, food emergencies, food shortages, inadequate health care and global economic crises far more frequently than men and boys. Even in countries with governmental gender equality policies, women are exposed to disadvantages in a different way, for example in working life.
Our commitment: Strengthening values, helping women
With the RAJA-Danièle Marcovici Foundation, RAJA has also been committed to women worldwide since 2006 - an absolute matter close to the heart of our RAJA Group Managing Director, Danièle Kapel-Marcovici. The foundation supports projects all over the world to make women more independent and thus strengthen their rights.
Based on the RAJA Danièle Marcovici Foundation, we have launched our local action programme in favour of disadvantaged women since 2016. Perspectives for Women is committed to projects that promote the integration of women, create education and equal opportunities, and offer protection against violence.
RAJA stands up for women and supports TafF
One such project is the Tagestreff, or TafF for short, run by Sozialpädagogische Alternativen e.V.(SOZPÄDAL) in Karlsruhe. It offers homeless women a protected space and safe retreat. It is also an important contact point for professional counselling and qualification measures.
The day centre for women offers a special service for disadvantaged women, which is why we want to support it again on the occasion of International Women’s Day, as in previous years. For this reason, we started a participation campaign: from 1 to 8 March, all employees of our German branches were called upon to collect donations in kind for the project. The association needed preserved food as well as KVV tickets, paper handkerchiefs or plasters. The boxes provided filled up quickly and could be handed over to the SOZPÄDAL association on 11 March.
Über den Verein
SOZPÄDAL supports socially disadvantaged people and groups of people in various projects. Among others, homeless women are supported. In addition to a women's boarding house and a women's counselling centre, homeless women have a place of refuge at TafF. The day centre offers a place to rest and exchange with other women, a coffee and warming room, lockers, a postal address for homeless women, a PC, telephone and photocopier, a clothes closet, washing machine and dryer, professional counselling and counselling for addiction problems, as well as the opportunity to work and gain qualifications.
