Team
Our team consists of around 35 multilingual counsellors, advisors, tutors, coordinators, organizers and cleaning staff.
the executive board
The Executive Board consists of three representatives, who perform their functions on a voluntary basis and with great commitment.
Selma Demir
Najwa Duzdar
Katharina Maly
our goals
Our goals
Our tasks
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Addressing social problems and their roots
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Help in overcoming personal and community related obstacles
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Taking initiatives in improving the living conditions of women
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Identifying personal, material and institutional benefits
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Creating suitable living conditions including psychological and material support, as well as promoting education which will allow women to actively take part in the society
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Helping women to realize their social rights and take advantage of them
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Empower women to consciously become aware of responsibility, tolerance and autonomy
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To support women and strengthen them by offering psychosocial counselling services and promoting education and wellbeing
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To help women take an informed decision concerning their life and to help them overcome obstacles in their everyday life
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To take advantage of all possibilities open to us, this may also include referral to other services and institutions depending on the individual needs of the women
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Building a network which includes all major players in this field of work, to ensure better communication and to bring forward the interests of marginalized and socially disadvantaged groups
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Assessing our capacities as well as our limitations, which will help us define new responsibilities and prevent the social exclusion of marginalized groups
Mission statement
Orient Express is a non-profit, neutral and religiously unaffiliated organisation that combines both a women’s counselling centre as well as a language learning centre.
We offer our counselling services to women with a migration background and their families, mainly from Turkey and the Arab region. We provide information and support on issues such as: family and partner problems, violence and abuse, forced marriage, FGM and generation conflicts. Complementary to these issues we also give legal advice and counselling on issues related to employment, social benefits, alien law and others.
Our services are free, confidential, and comprehensive and are offered in the following languages: German, Turkish, Arabic and English. Our language courses with childcare services are open to women from all nationalities.
The social work we have been doing as a Women's Counselling Centre and Learning Centre for over thirty years is professional solidarity with women, especially with women with migration background in personal and social distress.
History
The organisation was established in the year 1988 by and for Turkish migrant women. In the beginning it offered leisure activities for Turkish women as well as German courses with childcare services.
Till the year 1993 the organisation was member of the umbrella association for educational and counselling establishments.
The organisation changed its name to Orient Express in the year 1996 and has been since the year 1997 an official member of the Network of Austrian Counselling Centres for Women and Girls.