Community based advocacy: S/GBV

Community based advocacy aims to tackle different types of gender based violence, including empowerment exercises, information sharing and confidential talking groups. Tama works across various communities, seeking to identify and empower individuals who may then offer their own support to women and men affected by gender based violence. Additionally, Tama works with community leaders and religious leaders and other important figures, to ensure collaboration and timely referrals.

In open centres, in addition to mental health services, community based advocacy will help to re-create supports in the initial phases of post-displacements and identify potential survivors of S/GBV in need of further support. Additionally, Tama will seek out to instil an understanding of the legal rights S/GBV survivors may be able to access. As part of the efforts to combat S/GBV, Tama is recording and collecting information on all known cases and salient barriers and causes of gender based violence in post displacement settings, in order to extend the breadth of the issue.

Community Based advocacy: Mental health
Mental health can be highly stigmatized and misunderstood due to lack of awareness and various cultural dimensions attached to it. Nevertheless, acculturation stress, trauma suffered in the home country, during displacement and in the host community, ongoing stressors or pre-existing mental health conditions expose many people to more negative outcomes.

Tama seeks to carry interpreted group sessions with various communities, hosted by trained psychologists and counsellors, to bring in culturally sensitive information about mental health, psycho-educational sessions targeting various conditions people may suffer from and ways to protect oneself and family. Paired with individual support sessions, Tama seeks to offer comprehensive community support to persons struggling with mental health conditions.
Community based advocacy: skills empowerment [finding people with abilities in the field and asking them to pool together their resources]

Community based advocacy: Disability
Article 11 and 19 of the Convention for Rights of Persons with Disability establishes the State obligation to provide persons with disability with protection and support on an equal basis to others.

According to the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the relationship between migration and disability is a highly complex one, suggesting that migrant workers are exposed to a high risk of acquiring a disability due to occupational hazards, as they are often assigned to dangerous manual labor which can result in higher frequency of industrial accidents. Forced migration and conflict areas complicate the relationship between migration and disability, as both may be exposing migrants to high risks of injury and mental health trauma that may be disabling in the long term. Additionally, people who had a disability beforehand are much more vulnerable and at risk of S/GBV.

However, the breadth and scope of the problem in Malta is largely unknown, partially due to the lack of knowledge of what constitutes disability. Tama aims to bring knowledge about various types of disabilities, the protections and support persons may be entitled to, and to raise awareness about the options people have to empower themselves and participate fully in society.