| From: |
joya banerjee [ profile ] |
| Subject: |
Interesting campaign tactics for community level action
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| Sent: |
Feb 25th, 2011 - 04:02:40 |
| Attachments: |
t-shirt campaign.JPG
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Hi GYCA,
As part of an assessment of gender-based violence facilities and
programs in South Africa, I learned about a great campaign that could
serve as a best practice model.
Prevention in Action is an effort by the KwaZulu Natal Network on
Violence Against Women and Project Concern International, uses social
mobilization to prevent gender-based violence. The campaign is called
"What's keeping violence against women alive?"
Part of the action they hope to inspire is a) for men to stop
perpetrating violence, b) for women and men to stop being silent about
GBV when it happens by supporting survivors to report. When presenting
their work, they mentioned a study in Joburg in which a group went
into an informal settlement to see if people respond to gender based
violence. They had a group of drummers play extremely loudly in a
dense community, and found that several people came to knock on the
door and complain about the noise. The next day they simulated a man
beating up a woman in one of the flats, even louder than the drummers
had been playing, and not a single person came to complain.
The objective is to increase the number of women and men advocating
and acting against Violence Against Women (VAW) and to change social
norms that are permissive about VAW. "Community Engagers" are popular
opinion leaders from communities who are trained to conduct dialogues
in rural and urban areas of up to 500 people including traditional
leaders. Through trainings, engagement materials and community action
kits, they have recruited over 5,000 "Community Influencers" who
diffuse the campaign's objectives at the community level further.
They run men's groups where men can discuss the contextual issues that
drive VAW such as alcohol abuse, low status of women, poverty, desire
for economic control, issues around parenting, racial oppression,
belief that "real" men have lots of partners, etc. The idea is to
target the context where VAW is perpetuated, not just punishing
perpetrators or taking a "just say no" approach which is too
simplistic. Many other programs will "workshop" someone about what is
right and wrong, but then simply return them to the same context and
expect them to change their behavior.
One particularly interesting technique they used was to have
participants in community dialogues make their own t-shirts with
messages against VAW. They provided t-shirt and fabric paint, and
attached is a great photo of some of the shirts. One of them says "Got
problems? Abusing me won't solve them." People then hung up the
t-shirts on their clotheslines, which are highly visible in
communities.
To measure the effectiveness of community actions, the campaign uses
mobile technology. People can send a "please call me" SMS to their
helpline and they get a free call back so that they can report what
action they conducted, how many people attended and what were the
outcomes. Leaders who achieve successes are highlighted and receive
visibility, and their successes are amplified and the effect is
multiplied.
They did an extensive quantitative baseline study on knowledge,
attitudes and behaviors and are measuring impact against these
numbers.
This type of campaigning can be very successful on any social justice issue.
Joya
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