Help & Shelter has completed two phases of a UNICEF-funded child protection and family violence prevention project and has received funding for a third phase to run from August 2016 to February 2017.
The first phase was implemented between November 2014 and April 2015 and the second between July 2015 and February 2016.
The project is based in the communities of Good Hope, Stewartville, Uitvlugt and Kwakwani, and project activities include:
- Drafting, consulting, agreeing and finalising community-based protocols for abuse prevention and response.
- Training on the use of the protocols (reporting, follow-up, documentation – including of lessons learned etc.).
- Establishment of community-based teams through social mobilization and awareness sessions on violence and abuse and parenting sessions for both rights holders and duty bearers in communities.
- Monitoring the use of the protocols e.g. through documentation of human interest stories, successes/challenges- including bottlenecks at national level, identification of critical cases for follow-up and use of violence related data for advocacy.
- Drafting community-based action plans (based on knowledge gained) for the protection, prevention and treatment of all matters related to the protocols. (Note that the action plans will include explicit reference to the plans).
- Training for community level leaders (including faith-based leaders) with capacity to lead in the prevention and response of violence (especially sexual violence against children)
- Signed CRC-friendly agreement outlining the Faith-based Organisations’ stance in preventing responding and reporting child sexual violence
- Expanding the community and national level awareness on local actions to reduce child sexual abuse sensitisation campaigns and through human interest stories
- Providing counselling and psychosocial skills to community FBOs and stakeholders for a stronger networking responses to violence against children and the family.
Some of the project’s achievements so far are:
- Baseline surveys and reports completed in all communities
- Inter-sector forums resulted in a working report and the publishing of a child abuse intervention/response bulletin
- 101 parenting and youth interactive forums and programmes were completed and Be-Safe programmes were also conducted at 3 schools in 2 of the communities
- Approximately 816 parents and 436 children were directly impacted by project activities
- 68 community-based stakeholders were trained
- Community–based action teams were established in all the communities and provided with material and financial support for the implementation
- An average of 50 children per month
