Zambia: The Umweo Kanani Stand against Gender Based Violence (GBV)

Good practice and motivation as to why it is good practice is whereby you commit and involve yourself in the activities at that particular time and whereby you motivate the victim of Gender Based Violence (GBV) by educating, sensitising advising and giving the victim the total commitment and guidance. Good practice is all about using up strongly to fight for the rights of the voiceless and to let the victim of GBV know that they are not neglected or deserted in fighting for their rights.

The key objectives of this project is to provide gender education and train services providers who are involved in stopping in GBV. Ensure that there is full participation and involvement of stakeholders, communities and civic leaders e.g. victims of gender based violence, peer educators and equal involvement on gender consultative gatherings. Raising awareness on the twenty eight targets of the SADC protocol and implementations. Provide community sensitization programme with regards of the available services and resources for survivors.

Furthermore, specialised facilities should be provided including support mechanisms for survivors of gender based violence, introducing, promoting and provide gender education gender based violence and also advocating for women empowerment through land acquisition and other properties. To ensure there is equal presentation of women and men in jurisdiction bodies that heart the sexual harassment cases. To review and eradicate the traditional norms including social, culture, religious beliefs and political practices which legitimise and exacerbate the persistence and tolerance of GBV.

The main activities are:

• To drop the number of GBV cases experienced on the daily basis which previously caused drafts and because of cultural myths and ignorance of our own rights.
• To have a platform for women representation.
• SADC protocol have teamed up together with organisations like faith based organizations to achieve the goals of gender and development through workshops and sensitisation.

The project has benefited about 89 women with groups. The project reaches 28 indirect beneficiaries, and benefited 61 direct beneficiaries.

The types of monitoring and evaluation methods and tool that are used to measure the impact of ether 50/50 campaign are how cases of gender based violence that have been reported and handled or intervened by myself and referred to other institutions every three months I have to evaluate with other months stakeholders as to know whether is improvement or not. Monitoring is done on a daily basis because if you do not do monitoring you will end up failing to perform. The type of monitoring is like in a reported case of gender based violence, you have to make following and see if there are any achievement or not.

We have handled how many cases have successes and how many are pending and how many are referred to other institutions and compare the gender that has reported mostly, if they are men or not. After that I compared how many cases, that I handled the previous month against the present with this methodology, you can easily identify if you are achieving or not.

The tools that are used are very simple. I use my initiative, personal commitment and record keeping – stationary and to measure the impact of the post 2015 to 2030 campaign. The tools used are voicing out on sensitising the people that they don’t need to be violated of their rights. Just were sensitisation and education of knowing that they have a constitutional right and not to be violated. Empowering the people with information has made a great impact of the 50/50 campaign because now more cases are reported than before.

The main challenges have been that most of victims of gender based violence could report the same cases to nearly all the organisations. Lack of resources has made things difficult. For example, when talk about follow-ups of victims gender based violence. This challenges have being overcome by information disseminated to the people starting it community level, through integrated workshop church, school and community gatherings.

The woman survivors of gender violence have just been empowered with information of what, where and when they can report incidences if they were being gender violated of their rights. Women survivors of gender violence haven’t been empowered financially as a result of them not reporting such incidences of violence to the organisations or authority that handle such cases.

Barbra Nazuma divorced and survivor of gender violence said “l would like to thank the government for empowering me as a woman through the women clubs. Through the ministry of gender, we were empowered financially through “through presidential initiative marketer funding and I was selling vegetables in the market but this time I have advanced and I am now selling bucket dry maize.

Men have been more supportive in reducing gender violence as a result of organisation’s work on ending GBV. We have an example of the male councilors and members of parliament that are always in attendance when we have foras that are discussing issues of zero tolerances on gender violence. In every fora that is discussing issues of gender violence you will find that 60% are men and 40% women. In work places always women are few than men and in most cases some women don’t support their fellow women.

Evidence of changes at household level through a quote from a survivor of gender violence is that daisy patrica Banda is a housewife who has appreciated the interventions of the actions, education and sensitizations that the stake holders e.g. victim support unit, Zambia Civic Education, YWCA etc are doing she was appreciating the role that have been taken so as for us to knew that despite being women, we also have a constitutional right of not to be abused, physically, socially, morally, economically etc.

participation (community) in the campaign to and GBV has been involved strongly in political and community gatherings and the churches but we still have a long way to go because the victims of GBV are the very people that are defending their assailants. The community is fully in support of the campaign to end the GBV but the victims despite the myths and norms and culture, beliefs think it is normal for someone to be beaten or violated of their rights. Because of the community participation victims as now able to report to the police or other organisation that advocate for anti-gender based violence.

the good practice can be sustained and amplified post 2015 by integrating with all stake orders when it comes to planning programs and involvement of all partners so they sustain the goals of achievement the work can be replicated by other organisation by having around table meetings or workshops so has to have one thing in common.