The Center for Girls was founded on April 15, 1998, on the initiative of two volunteers of SOS Helpline for Women and Children Victims of Violence. The aim of its foundation was to improve the social position of young women through their education and emancipation.
THE MISSION of the Center for Girls is to empower children, girls and women through support, education, activism and creativity.
The Center for Girls implemented Empowering Self-Defense workshops in four more high schools in Niš and at three faculties: "Bora Stanković" Gymnasium, School of Commerce, School of Fashion and Beauty, School of Economics and at the faculties: Faculty of Occupational Safety, Faculty of Electronics, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Philosophy. Through 60 workshops, 250 girls/women learned how to defend themselves against verbal and physical attacks.
Since the beginning of 2023, 10 girls and women in Serbia were murdered in a family-partner relationship context (i.e. killed by their current/former husbands/partners, fathers, sons, brothers...).
Over 700 people saw the performance "Women's Graveyard", performed by the activists of the Center for Girls on a rainy day, on the occasion of 9 femicides since the beginning of the year. Many passers-by stopped, commented, photographed and recorded the performance, some of them wanted to share their experience with violence or the experience of a woman close to them, and one fellow citizen stood with us the whole time.