Botswana: Moshupa Sub District Embarking on Life Skills Training

The Moshupa Sub District Council project is geared at developing women, It heals their psychological wellbeing and it also develops their ability to identify their strengths, which may be used for financial literacy and economic development. The project entails to shift the power paradigm from learned helplessness to self-efficacy, the ultimate goal of this project will equip the women to be independent from their partners and be able to find their own voice within the economic sphere of life. This project not only provides them with proper skills of protecting their children from maltreatment but to also adopt good parental skills such as role modelling, and even adopt these from other members.

The project is primary set out to fill the gaps that were caused by societal ills brought about by issues of abuse, child maltreatment, high rates of unemployment and educational enrollment of women primarily brought about by patriarchy. Entrepreneurship and economic studies carried out by institutions such as the International Labour organization (2011), indicated how abuse caused women to loose their jobs, to experience PTSD within work settings and as well experience sexual harassment at work. Therefore, the project set out to address issues of lack of confidence, inability to access sustainable livelihood projects, inability to access human related services such as health, legal and economic services due to patriarchal structures through the learning process.

The Project was carried out in group platforms such as workshops with relevant stakeholders. Women Group Discussions, school talks and Kgotla Meetings. Follow up sessions were also carried out to re-emphasize the need for women to realize their strength. The project is a talent identifying platform adopts the strength perspective, their talents were their source of strength.

The main activities are:

• Sub-education committee and the sub social and community development committee have raised concern on the heightened rates of Gender Based Violence, Alcohol Abuse and child neglect.
• Stakeholders such as local leaders held a workshop that was motivated to bring organizations to discuss on how we can develop strategies in addressing these issues.
• The council also engaged in mini-show and market day exhibitions.
• The poverty alleviation project (Brick yard) participants were selected from poor socio-economic backgrounds in order to improve their livelihoods and develop their financial standing.
• The poverty alleviation project embarked on disaster housing projects which families were assisted after the 2015 disaster outbreak.
• These initiatives aim to provide shelter which is a human necessity and most of the beneficiaries are women.

The project reached 4 937 direct beneficiaries. The Moshupa Sub District Council allocated $15 573 200 to this project. The total budget for the project is $15 573 200.

Attendance registers for Kgotla meetings, workshops addressed to educate, share ideas and get feedback on how people are understanding issues and their response level towards issues of gender justice and gender equality. Through monthly, quarterly and annual reports compiled, one is able to measure the uptake of economic empowerment programmes (for example poverty eradication, mini shows), housing schemes(like Self Help Housing agency, House improvement scheme, destitute housing, disaster housing initiative and poverty alleviation) which are geared toward uplifting peoples livelihoods.. The uptake of programmes is an indication of understanding and being knowledgeable of the services being offered and their intended goals.

Keeping case registers of incoming clients due to self-referrals and other agency referrals assists in monitoring and tracking cases as the number of cases registered whether low or high assists in knowing what could be done next. Referrals from other institutions like health facilities, the police also helps in keeping track of the rate and nature of prevalent cases in the area.

The budget restrictions, budget cuts and zero budget growth affects the implementation of projects. Currently the council is already experiencing negative vote balances which affects the implementation of some projects. The second challenge may aligned to the lack of commitment amongst stakeholders, not all of the stakeholders come on board in the pursuit of gender justice hence affecting the implementation of the projects, the gender committee in general is also vulnerable to instability as the rate of transfers and reshuffling impacts the delivery of set tasks and goals. he costs of training new committee members creates an financial constraint, as council budgets are restricted and limited.

Furthermore lack of accessibility to resources imposes a sense of helplessness for the beneficiaries as they are not able to receive opportunities to create and develop their business, and also access the resources. The fear of victimization and self stigmisation also proves to be a challenge for these projects as the people do not openly disclose their GBV related issues. The lack of transport affects the monitoring and evaluation of projects, as well as the mobilization for workshops furthermore transporting clientele during these activities may be a problem since they would not be any mode of transport.

The preferential scheme that was introduced in the administration of tenders has given more women and other vulnerable groups like the youth and people living with disability a 15% preference in the awarding of tenders. This has given more women an opportunity to win tenders, and that we increase their financial muscle and to be at the same level with their male counter parts.

Women leadership in the community is a mushrooming phenomena, such as in village development committees and child welfare committees. There are a number of women elected to sit in Village Development Committees and for the child protection committees the committees are balance with one adult female and one adult male, one boy child and one girl child. At the village development committee level, that is where most decisions on projects and community development initiatives are made, drawing of the District Development Plans and ultimately National Development Plans, this on its own shows that women are playing a bigger role in the development of their villages and the community at large. For example in Manyana a female headman was selected and appointed to join the chieftainship of Manyana customary court. Participation in public arenas is a platform through which women are seen to engages in activities such as the dikgafela and general Kgotla meetings.

Nomination of two men in the Council Gender committee which one was elected and one volunteered is a positive development for Moshupa Sub district, and the fact that this committee now has all council departments represented, this will bring a positive change. At political level we see more men councillors developing interest in joining the committee, that shows passion and interest in the gender work, also this is a signal of understanding and the misconception they used to attach on gender issues have been cleared due to several sensitization workshops.

The sustainability and replication of the good practice can be sustained and amplified post 2015 through the continued monitoring of existing stake holders as well as invitations of new stakeholders outside the Moshupa district council at local, regional and international level. The development of work plans on a monthly and yearly period would enable the committee to stay focused and goal driven, hence achieving the necessary aims leading to its sustainability.

Strengthening outreach programs by continuously and frequently reaching out to the society at large is a very important aspect of sustaining the good practice. Engaging the media in relation to issues of gender based violence can also enable the committee not to only reach Moshupa district alone but also the entire nation of Botswana. Promoting activities on the council website, creating a Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn pages would help in outreach programs. the more knowledge of the 50/50 campaign is spread out the more clients we could reach out. To promote activities that are gender work related can attract more people and would help in creating awareness. The more we are engaged in them the more the committee and projects would be achieved, examples of such events include the 16 days of activism against gender based violence, women’s day celebration, national HIV/AIDS day, June 16 commemoration, disabilities day commemoration.

Furthermore strengthening the men & boys involvement in gender mainstreaming activities as developing platforms of inclusion for the male voice in interventions could benefit the committee by creating a holistic framework to intervention platform. The adoption of creating publications in line to issues of gender based violence could help to boost the outreach program as well as mini researches on upcoming trends affecting  gender based violence at a local, regional and international levels. The issue of knowledge of power is addressed.