Reinforcing homeless women's autonomy

Greetings dear friends and supporters! We hope this report finds you and your loved ones safe and well. We want to tell you some things we found in the last months, that we think are important to our project.

The first thing we do when addressing any social issue related to Multipolar's mission (to help homeless people getting out of the streets through decent jobs) is research, in order to know the needs and problems of the collective we want to approach. In this case, surveys conducted with women living on the streets and public shelters in Buenos Aires show that 92% of them have been homeless for 1 to 3 years (with a majority of them falling into the public shelter system between March 2020 and May 2021), 67% are single mothers (with an average of 1.1 children in charge per women), and 12% of their children have some kind of medical condition or disability.

67% of these women have NO social protection (government's financial aid) whatsoever, and 46% of them never had a formal (decent) job. Perhaps the lack of opportunities to get a decent job lies on the fact that 66% couldn't finish high school, or that 93.8% suffer from a medical or mental condition, including substance abuse; or that 6.3 out of 10, never learnt how to use a computer or barely did. Or the combination of all of the above.

In addition, 71% of them have been victims of gender violence and/or some type of abuse, before or during their time living on the streets.

At this point, the results show a reallity that questions us as a society, the way we treat women and the way life itself is way harder for a woman, harder if she is a mother, and much harder if she suffers from any health condition.

But in order to get a bigger picture, and to get more information to set our approaching strategies, we also got to know that 92% of them want psychological assistance and 96% are interested in becoming digitally literate. 83% still have the ability to think and hope for a better future (for themselves and their children), and that would be even more possible if they could get acces to day care. 

And last, but definitely not least at all, ALL of them are interested in building their autonomy through a program that helps them gain resources and tools to acces job opportunities and in some point down that path, get a decent job to improve their quality of life and their children's. A quality of life they deserve and are entitled to.

This is our Project's goal: reinforce homeless women's autonomy. We need you support to apply our methodology, set strategies and get the resources they need to have the opportunity to make it though. We count on you!