Mindfulness
Being mindful is the central guiding principle of Omed to support and ensure the respect and dignity of girls and young women. Mindfulness means being conscious and maintaining considerate, respectable sense of awareness. By respecting boundaries in interactions with one another, Omed creates spaces that strengthen the self-determination of diverse groups.
We oppose any attempt towards discrimination and violence in the communities we serve. We understand, violence exists when, through actions or structures, powerful influence is exerted on others without their consent, and this leads to damage and/or disadvantages, especially among girls and young women. Violence can emanate from specific people (individual violence), but there is also discrimination exercised by specific people, e.g. when authorities or structures appear to make participation or access to resources more difficult for some people than others (structural violence). It can also take various forms: sexualized violence (e.g. rape), psychological violence (e.g. manipulation), verbal violence (e.g. insults), physical violence (e.g. hitting), … It can occur once or as part of longer-lasting abusive relationships.
We also see violence as part of exerting social power and dominance in interactions (e.g. sexism or racism), through which people are assigned to groups construed as unequal. Of course, mindfulness cannot dissolve these structural anomalies and deep set issues. But, being mindful can be a “temporary solution” that deals with the acute effects of power relationships such as physical, psychological, sexual or any type of abuse or discrimination.
Omed e.V. offers affected girls and women opportunities to find their own way of dealing with the situation and to consider how they can continue to attend school if possible. Mindfulness is just an attempt to better deal with the conditions in the society we support. The concept does not replace dealing with certain topics (forms of violence, types of discrimination).
