Raising awareness of legal rights and available remedies is a crucial first step in ensuring meaningful access to justice.
Empowering Communities
One of the challenges faced in the fight against gender-based violence is the normalisation, and even acceptance, of such violence as a natural part of family and community life. Further, when violence does occur, many people lack information about their legal rights, the available legal remedies, how to access the system and the availability of existing support services in their community.
LvA conducts targeted outreach, campaigns to raise awareness and workshops to educate and empower community members with the information required to confront gender-based violence in their communities. LvA also works to address the harmful attitudes, norms and behaviours that lead to violence, starting with children as young as five years old.
Our Impact
Our Interventions
School Interventions
Recognising that children are particularly vulnerable to violence, we partner with primary and secondary schools to facilitate workshops for learners concerning sexual abuse. LvA uses inclusive narratives to illustrate keys issues such as grooming, victim-blaming and ‘blesser’ relationships. Our team works to ensure that children know where to seek help. LvA trains teachers on how to handle any disclosures or suspicions of abuse in an empathetic and responsible manner.
We also work with Early Child Development (ECD) Centres to prevent GBV. These interventions aim to engage young learners with aspects of gender roles that may encourage violent behaviour such as bullying. During the intervention, ECD learners interact with a persona doll and are encouraged to foster empathy for the doll, eliciting behaviours that can then be practised with their peers.
Empowering Social Change
Beyond just providing information, LvA works to empower young women and girls in Diepsloot to confront gender-based violence in their own community. Through a four-day workshop, participants develop a deeper understanding of GBV from an intersectional feminist framework, including concepts like power, patriarchy and gender. They also learn about the available legal processes related to GBV.
Graduates of the workshop series are then invited to form a Community Action Group, which serves as a platform for individuals to use and disseminate knowledge gained through the workshop series. This includes developing additional skills, initiating advocacy efforts, sharing information and mobilising the broader community. To date, these Action Groups have organised dialogues, led marches and implemented awareness-raising campaigns with minimal support from LvA.
Outreach & Awareness-Raising Campaigns
