Georgian Miners are on strike – AGAIN

Georgian Miners are on strike – AGAIN

EESPN Blog

Protest demonstrations have been arising from time to time demanding both miners’ labor and social rights, such as: improving safety guarantees, enhancing working conditions and providing equitable wages. Currently, on June 14, 2023, in the western mining city 3,000 miners went on strike demanding increase in wages, improvements in safety conditions, better insurance, and nutrition, 12-hour shifts, vacations, technology upgrades and curbing of pollution caused by the extraction.

Introducing Gender Equality Plans in research institutions

Introducing Gender Equality Plans in research institutions

EESPN Blog

Across research institutions, gender imbalances still exist and are widely tolerated: few of the top positions in academia are occupied by women, and women still experience slow career progression. To tackle these issues, it is important to define concrete objectives and employ measures on an individual, cultural and structural level.

Meta-evaluation and evaluation standards in social policy

Meta-evaluation and evaluation standards in social policy

EESPN Blog

Meta-evaluation is an “evaluation of evaluations” to improve future evaluation work. As a highly relevant topic for professionals working in social policy, the third module of the virtual Bridge-Building Summer School of Evaluation in Social Policies (August 25-27, 2021) was about meta-evaluation and evaluation standards in social policy.

Humanitarian aid Ukraine: lonely people 70+ in Donbass – challenges, lessons learned and recommendations

Humanitarian aid Ukraine: lonely people 70+ in Donbass – challenges, lessons learned and recommendations

EESPN Blog

The situation in Donbass is quite challenging due to the conflict and its consequences in the resident population. The TLU team used the new WJR grant of 10 000 GBP received in winter 2020-21 to make the necessary procurements and arrange the delivery of humanitarian aid to 384 residents aged 70+ in 14 villages located in the contact line.

Foster care in Albania

Foster care in Albania

EESPN Blog

Referring to the latest annual report of State Social Services, during 2020 15 children from the public residential institutions of children in Albania have been reunited with their biological families, while 27 children have been adopted. The national program for the establishment of the new foster care service is institutionalized since 2008 in the Strategy of social protection and the action plan for its implementation.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the deinstitutionalization of child care reform in Ukraine

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the deinstitutionalization of child care reform in Ukraine

EESPN Blog

“The first wave” of the childcare deinstitutionalization reform in Ukraine started in 2008. As a result, since 2017, more than 90% of orphans and children deprived of parental care are raised in families or in family-type forms of care (under guardianship/custody, by relatives, in foster families, family-type child homes) according to the data of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.

Recent developments in the childcare and child protection system in Armenia

Recent developments in the childcare and child protection system in Armenia

EESPN Blog

Since 2001, the Armenian Government in cooperation with international and local organizations has been carrying out reforms aimed to establish and strengthen the childcare and protection system. As a result of these efforts the number of children living in residential care institutions has decreased drastically: based on official data from 12,700 children kept in close state education and care institutions in 2001, to 1,429 in 2019.