BREAK
Breaking Barriers — Consent Education and Safe Disclosure for Young Women with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities
The project focuses on young women aged 15–29 with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) — a group disproportionately exposed to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and too often excluded from mainstream prevention programmes, consent education and safe disclosure mechanisms.
At the heart of the project is the BREAKpoint platform — an open-source, fully accessible digital environment co-designed with and for young people with IDD.
Why it matters — BREAK
Young women with IDD face higher risks of abuse and significant barriers to reporting violence or accessing support. Traditional prevention tools and sexuality education programmes are often not cognitively accessible or adapted to their needs.
BREAK responds to this gap by combining accessible, rights-based Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), digital innovation, user-centred co-design, and safe and inclusive disclosure pathways.
Core Objectives
- Empower young women with IDD through accessible, rights-based CSE that promotes consent, bodily autonomy, and the recognition and reporting of violence.
- Engage young men with IDD in primary prevention through modules on respectful relationships, empathy and positive masculinity.
- Strengthen professional capacity to deliver adapted CSE and respond effectively to safeguarding concerns.
- Combat stigma and harmful stereotypes around disability and sexuality through inclusive awareness campaigns.
- Co-design and pilot the BREAKpoint digital platform, combining prevention-focused education with innovative disclosure tools.
- Advocate for structural change, integrating disability-informed GBV prevention into policy and institutional frameworks.
Key Actions
- Transnational needs assessment and participatory co-design.
- Development of an accessible digital learning and disclosure environment.
- Field-testing and validation in five EU countries, with training seminars for more than 150 professionals.
- Educational roll-out to more than 100 young women and 75 young men with IDD.
- Organisation of stakeholder roundtables and policy dialogues.
- Launch of a European awareness campaign reaching more than 50,000 people.
Stakeholders
KMOP Education & Innovation Hub
Greece
AFEJI Hauts-de-France
France
CESIE ETS
Italy
N. Papazis kai Sia O.E. (ALTSOL)
Greece
Women’s Issues Information Center (WIIC)
Lithuania
Asociación Nacional de Salud Sexual y Discapacidad (ANSSYD)
Spain
European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD)
Belgium