The bold initiative submitted by the NGO Sauvegarde de Seine-Saint-Denis, providing a different perspective to the prevention of domestic violence, appealed greatly to the Selection Committee members: the association organises responsibility and awareness help groups attended by perpetrators of marital violence. Recollection of the initial love encounter, or search for the triggers of violence are among the many topics addressed in the help groups via introspective exchanges and role playing.
On the same subject, the Committee also decided to support a film to be produced by women victims of marital violence. The CAPSY association has partnered with two filmmakers to help the women write and shoot a fiction film on the topic. Restoring the women’s self-esteem, involving them in a high quality project and raising public awareness to their stories, such is the ambition of this unprecedented project.
Two other highly original programmes dedicated to women’s empowerment were also greeted with much enthusiasm by the Selection Committee. In Mauritania, the GRET is training over a thousand women grouped in cooperatives in plastic waste collection, sorting and recycling. The “Zazou” (or plastic bag) project intends to help women gain economic self-reliance while living in a cleaner environment.
Similarly in Goa, India, Acting for Life and the industrial laundry Swift Wash employ former sex-workers and reformed procurers, to help them develop alternative income-generating activities.

While innovation has become a criterion indispensible to all incipient philanthropic programmes, other less revolutionary but sound initiatives continue to provide women with essential shelter and care services.
Since its creation in 2009, the PPR Foundation has partnered with the Fédération Nationale Solidarité Femmes (FNSF), a French NGO managing in particular the nationwide help line “Violences Conjugales Info 3919” (marital violence toll-free help line). Once again this year, the Foundation will fund the salary of a FNSF trainer who trains the volunteers and staff of associations specialised in supporting victims of marital violence.
Domestic violence knows no borders and festers in conditions of poverty and social exclusion. In Uruguay and Peru, a number of NGOs develop sheltering and care services for women victims of marital violence to compensate for the lack of adequate public welfare services. In Lima, Peru, Samu Social International organises mobile teams assigned to identify victims and provide shelter to women victims of domestic violence. In Montevideo, Uruguay, CEPRODIH is opening a new shelter to house pregnant victims and provide empowerment support to women.

In an ongoing concern to recognize the solidarity commitment of Group employees, the Committee also decided to support two NGOs sponsored in the context of “Staff Projects”. For the third year in a row, the PPR Foundation will fund teacher training for 16 Lao young women, jointly with the association Compter sur Demain, sponsored by a Fnac employee who is a volunteer member. Two other Fnac employees, Amélie and Layla, had returned from their solidarity leaves in Benin last year with yet another project in the making with the association Mille Lucioles, involving the creation of a care and training centre for women, which the Foundation has decided to support.