Savanne COE Institutional Profile

Savanne District Council, moving towards a more gender-balanced future.

The District Council of Savanne has some strong insights and their slogans are ‘’LIVING WITH DIGNITY, GENDER EQUALITY, ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE, EMPOWERING OF WOMEN, ABUSE AWARENESS’’.

The district serves a population of 80, 000 people. The council has launched a citizen support portal where people with different issues can come forward and seek help with the council and where the council will help them as much as they can. On top of that, they have the MUGA project where they combat the patriarchal society and empower women. MUGA’s goal is to empower these women, make them come out of their shells through activities and programs organised by the latter all free of charge.

The council has 5 main objectives that are

• Climate change
• Development
• Business facilitation
• Entrepreneurship
• Gender Based Violence

These are the main focus of the council and they have a steering committee who will guide them to achieve all the goals they have in place to better their society as well as the environment they live in.  They recently held a workshop targeting women’s rights in order to sensitise and increase awareness of women’s rights. They believe that by doing so, the women who acquire this knowledge will transcend what they know to other women and men in the locality in order to spread the word on women’s rights.

The Savanne District council has in the past achieved a lot of Awards regarding Women’s rights along with their gender champion. The council also focuses on climate change and has carried out a sensitizing programme whereby they taught women and men the importance of saving water.

Moving along, the Savanne District council believes that every person should have the right to live with dignity so they offer moral and financial support to handicapped individuals who may have issues financially or mentally due to their physical attributes.

The council promotes health by organising sports and dance competitions where the locals can come and take part in irrespective of gender and age. A march against violence was organised in Souillac where local people took a stand against violence.

In terms of governance, 17% of the people are women and 83 % are male. Although there is a gap, the council ensures that the women have a say in decision making and administrative related things. They also are very proud of there Chief Executive Woman.

The council organised a cleaning campaign where women and men worked hand in hand to clean up the area and promote a well balanced, pollution free, environment.

They have reconstructed the village hall of Bois Cheri, Grand Bois and Riviere Des Anguilles. They monitor their work and have a GBB action plan that they want to implement and ameliorate. The also collaborated with an NGO called, L’etoile D’esperance whereby all of the council members and even staff were involved in raising the awareness of alcoholism and Teenage pregnancy. The council also worked with children to sensitize them against the problems affecting society like substance abuse also a march against violence. An exchange programme was also done between the council of Savanne and Rodrigues island, where the council in Rodrigues stated that they want to end violence by educating the population about the negative impacts of the latter and they want to increase the literacy level for women in the island.

Since they are very much so dedicated to achieving all the goals set up especially in regards to gender-based violence, they have a steering committee that will ensure that the work is being done and changes are being made in order to remedy the situation at large.

The council has allocated more of their budget in 2019 to promote gender equality. Even with sponsors such as Telecom and Omnicane, the council often has a funding issue where there are a lot of projects but not enough finances to carry out the plans. The council has taken an oath to plants trees in all 17 villages and have implemented a programme for waste segregation and with the help of the government, the council is going towards e-licensing. They also want to promote Gender Equality with the help of Gender Links.

The challenge faced is that the council has to have specific figures on the budgeting allocated to women, even though they do not have a huge budget, they ensure gender budgeting is mainstreamed in their activities.