women's networks

funded by the maypole trust

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Networks:

Hull Women's Network Ltd (HWN)

Purpose:

We are a not-for-profit company created by a small group of dedicated women in 2004 as a strategic partnership of 5 women's centres (Bransholme Women's Centre, Preston Road Women's Centre, Hull Women's Centre, West Hull Women's Centre and North Hull Women's Centre) and SAFE women's self defence training company all based in and around Kingston-Upon-Hull.

Activities:

With Hull Women's Network (HWN) as the umbrella organisation, we work together to provide collaborative services to women ranging from accredited courses, child care, and women-only social events to counselling, financial advice, sexual health services and support for women and children experiencing domestic violence and sexual abuse.

HWN also directly creates and bids for projects run directly through the Network across women's centres:

• recently we have completed a volunteer training programme for women through our Women with Wings project;
• the Future Steps project focused on accredited training and support for younger women 16-24;
• our Breakthrough Women into Education and Work project has now taken up the mantle of these earlier projects and provides broad ranging support, free child care and training for women of all ages and is based at North Hull Women's Centre. The Breakthrough Research project (April 2006-December 2007), funded through the European Social Fund, Learning and Skills Council and HWN is linked to Gender Studies at the University of Hull and, through life-course interviews and surveys, is currently exploring women's life experiences of family, education and employment across the Yorkshire and Humber region. Through encapsulating over one hundred and fifty women's voices, this large-scale research will provide richness and texture to the gender disaggregated statistics around, for example, occupational and educational segregation and will be disseminated regionally and nationally in December 2007.

Our most recent project (April 2007), the Futurebuilders project, is perhaps our most ambitious yet and involves the purchase of 9 properties across the city which will be rented from 2008 to women and their families with the support of the range of services offered by HWN and the partner organisations. This is a long term project over the next thirty years, so we expect to be around for some time to come!This we do with approximately 12 women volunteers representing each partner organisation and Dr Suzanne Clisby as the unpaid independent Chair.

Region or specific community:

Kingston Upon Hull and East Yorkshire

Membership Criteria if any:

Women only (boys and girls can access child care and family events)

Membership Fee if any:

None

Contact Name:

Dr Suzanne Clisby, Chair of HWN

Contact Address:

Co/ Gender Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
University of Hull
Cottingham Road
HU6 7RX

Contact Phone:

01482 465781

Contact Mobile:

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Contact Email:

s.m.clisby@hull.ac.uk

Contact Web:

http://www.hullwomensnetwork.org.uk/

Funders if any:

N/A, funding received via bids to funders for individual project bids - e.g. ESF, LSC, Futurebuilders

Other Information:

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