About the project

In the course of our work and regular meetings with girls and woman with mental disabilities, we discovered that they often lack important information when it comes to the female body, hygiene, the prevention of women’s ailments, and cohabiting with someone as a partner. Moreover, in our consulting practice, we encountered cases of sexual abuse and of women with mental disabilities being extorted by their partners – which is caused to a large extent by a lack of information about this subject. Consequently, we prepared the project Now I Know!, which is devoted to providing easily understandable information for woman with mental disabilities.

The project’s partner is the “the Centre for Disability Studies” at the University of Iceland.

The project gave rise to:

• Brochures – easily understandable brochures about the female body, partner relationships, sex, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, and sexual violence.  .
• Self-help groups – groups of women with mental disabilities that enabled women, but also men, to share their joys, concerns, and problems.
• A website with information that we collected in the course of the project as well as links to other interesting information. Brochures in an electronic format are available for downloading on the website along with contacts to an expert group and the stories of women that we gathered during the project.
• Expert group – a group of experts who intervene in the event that sexual violence occurs. We have familiarised these experts with the specifics of working with women who have mental disabilities and expect them to become consultants in cases concerning the sexual abuse of women and men with mental disabilities.

The project is supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway within the framework of the EEA fund (www.fondnno.cz, www.eeagrants.cz).