SAFETY TRAINING FOR WOMEN

Prepare for managing risky situations that affect you as a woman

Who is this training for?
For all women whose physical and psychological safety may be compromised unexpectedly. Do you experience unwelcome advances from your employer? Do you engage in outdoor activities alone? Do you need to use public transport at night? Do you travel internationally alone? As a woman, you may frequently find yourself in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) environment. The women's safety training course teaches you how to behave professionally in these situations so that you can operate  physically and emotionally unscathed.

​

Training topics

Trainees acquire an overall comprehension of how to maintain their personal safety, building a mindset that they can depend on when effectively and flexibly addressing conflict situations. Integrated into this mindset, they learn practical, technical, and tactical solutions and strategies that can be applied in specific scenarios. The training curriculum is based on five principles. Risk can be reduced if:

​

• There is a plan. Without a plan, panic can take over.

• The plan suits the personality and abilities of the trainee. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

• Prevention takes into account that extreme stress limits effectiveness and the ability to think rationally.

• Avoiding a risky situation is preferable to entering and trying to resolve it.

• A verbal solution is preferable to a physical one.

​

Safety for women is not a self-defense course in a physical sense. Trainees develop a cognitive orientation, a way of seeing, analyzing, and reacting to their environment that significantly reduces the risk of harm. To achieve this, we and our trainees work on the following topics:

• Building a rapport with the other party in order to gain control

• Situational awareness - eliminate surprises

• Defensive communication - achieve your objective from a position of little or no power

• Decision making in stressful situations: Should I run? Fight? Talk myself out?

• The security mindset - an integrated approach that provides sustained protection across time and situations.

​​

Methodology

There are general principles of personal security, but no universal methods that work regardless of the characteristics of a given context. Therefore, in the first phase of the training, we assist participants in identifying their own safety-related characteristics. Then, using role-play and situational exercises, trainees learn to use a wide range of security-enhancing tools, including risk analysis, situational awareness, crisis communication, and various tactical moves.Throughout the training participants develop their own security consciousness which stays with them long term and across diverse environments.

​

Delivery

The women's safety training group consists of 10 trainees or fewer. It is a twelve hour event that is usually delivered in two 6 hours sessions and held in a classroom-like setting.

Would you give it a try?

How would you talk yourself out of a street conflict with three men? Éva Mellik, a reporter at the popular online women's magazine www.nol.hu tried, when she did a video report on our work this spring. Eva said that things did not turn out as she expected in the realistic role play exercise - a teaching method we often use. She said: "I thought it would never happen to me. I would talk myself out of the riskiest of situations. I could not have been more wrong." The bottom line: being prepared to recognize and handle risk can save you from physical and psychological harm. Watch the video if you'd like to see how Eva - confident and unprepared - handled the situation. (Watch the full video here.)