Skip to content

Road of Hope


RESEARCH

Empowering Refugee Women Through Experiential Knowledge in Amsterdam

Refugee women often face gender-blind policies and projects that ignore the different roles, responsibilities, skills, needs and priorities of women and men. This sometimes prevents women from participating because of children or other aspects of their cultural background. Road of Hope also faced this. In previous projects, refugees were supported as a total group, which, in practice, was mostly attended by men.

Breath of Hope

Against this backdrop of understanding the need to combat ethnic inequality and, above all, gender inequality, Road of Hope launched the Breath of Hope project. This project aims to reduce barriers to social inclusion related to the emotional well-being of women from refugee backgrounds. The project aims to achieve this goal by creating a safe space to share experiences and facilitate self-expression and self-recognition; promoting the development and recovery of emotional competencies related to self-knowledge, assertiveness, independence and resilience of newcomers; and encouraging the building of new connections and trusting relationships, fostering community building and promoting a sense of belonging.

Sharing experiences in a safe environment and using “experiential knowledge” is crucial to the Breath of Hope method. Listening to someone else’s experience is a powerful tool for empowerment. The so-called “intercultural facilitators” play a central role in this. These are women from refugee backgrounds who have previously participated in Breath of Hope themselves and are a part of our research.

Experiential Knowledge

District Workshop with Experiential Knowledge for better integration, The Kenniscentrum Ongelijkheid (KCO) wants to promote knowledge and practice development to reduce inequality in Amsterdam. One way the Kenniscentrum Ongelijkheid does this is by funding neighbourhood workshops. The Road of Hope Foundation and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam were put in contact to join forces and start a co-creative project. The central question at the start was how experiential knowledge can be used more broadly and have an impact on promoting the integration of refugees.

In 2023, the first step of the neighbourhood workshop was taken, by describing the way experiential knowledge is used in Breath of Hope and understanding the impact and effective mechanisms for promoting the integration of women from refugee backgrounds.

Dive into this research and learn more about the impact of “Experiential Knowledge” on the better integration of women with refugee backgrounds through the testimonies of the women interviewed and the scientific literature.