I have been following the discussion around creating safe environments with much interest. I strongly agree with Pina and also Rus's contribution last week about the need to work to prevent violence against women by getting at the core issues of status and gender and sexism. A preventative approach demands that we work holistically within communities to reach not only women or men on an individual level but collectively to try to change the climate in the community because it is the collective ideas held about women and their worth that allows for violence to continue unnoticed or without consequence.
Preventative approaches are challenging because they involve such holistic and long term thinking, but I think they are essential if we want to move away from traditional strategies that focus on women's empowerment or providing services or working with police to increase legal access for women. Certainly these are all important initiatives but in isolation, not enough. I am now convinced that coordinated intense involvement needs to happen in a community if we really want to see change. This means moving away from one-off activities, specific campaigns, or isolated work within one sector or group as those efforts don't seem to build enough momentum in the community to really create meaningful or sustained change. In Uganda and Tanzania we are trying out a new approach to prevent domestic violence that works with communities as a whole -- recognizing all the layers and components in it that add up to create the climate and communal attitude of the place. The projects work through five 'phases' that help move a community through the process of behavior change over several years. It sounds clinical but what we have found is that ideas and efforts have to be slowly unfolded and introduced according to the natural processes that we all undergo when making changes in our lives. For example, asserting that domestic violence hurts women or should stop right off the bat is premature -- people have to be convinced at a very personal level by people whom they already know and trust. Within each phase of the project a wide variety of community members and professionals are involved in different ways and according to their 'role' in the community. The aim is to reach as many community members as possible through fun, creative and personally engaging activities that are run by community members themselves with support from staff. So at any one point there are a variety of activities happening at different levels -- in the community there might be -- drama, booklet clubs, dialogues, exhibitions, etc. There are also posters and booklets and materials in circulation that seek to make people think about DV in the context of their own lives, families and community. Finally, there is intense work going on within professional sectors because we realize that reaching just community members is of little affect if the community institutions that they rely on do not mirror and even initiate some of the changes. In this way the projects work with health care workers, community leaders, police, teachers, journalists, social welfare officers, religious leaders, etc. In all cases, the staff train and support professionals who think of and do a range of activities within their own workplace. In this way there are lots of men involved in different capacities, personal and professional, in the projects. All the activities are geared toward personal reflection and internal change happening in concert with community level change. Men see other men involved, and the men raising the issue with them are men they already know and trust. We have found that many men are motivated to work with the project, one of the benefits for them is that they are seen as 'modern' men. They seem to get energy and kudos for this. They are also seen to be helping the community because the projects approach DV from many angles in addition to women's rights such as family harmony or more intimate relationships or safe families. We have found that this can take the edge off for many men and they seem to be able to then engage in ways that they would resist if the starting point was only women's rights. But clearly, in East Africa as in all parts of the world, we recognize that change cannot happen if we work with women alone, men must be involved to change the social context of the community. So far, the impact of the projects have been really encouraging. And while the project can sound complex -- reaching so many different people through different activities all within the same time frame, if it is well planned out, it need not be. In order to assist other organizations who are interested in planning along term preventative program we are in the process of finalizing a 'Resource Guide' (to be copublished with UNIFEM, Nairobi within the next few months) that can help organizations structure and implement such a project. If you are interested, more information can be found at www.raisingvoices.org I would love to hear of other groups efforts in different parts of the world who are involved in similar work! best, Lori **************** Lori Michau Co-Director Raising Voices PO Box 6770 Kampala, Uganda Tel: 256 041 531186 / 531249 (fax) 071 839626 (mobile) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.raisingvoices.org ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
