The main objective of the proposed project is to provide quality counseling services to children and youth who are victims of school related gender based violence. The grant requested will also be used to provide training in counseling to stakeholders of the target community in order to enable them to counsel the students themselves. The target population is forty schools selected in the Eastern Region from four communities. Ten schools will be used as a control group and the remaining thirty as the sample size.
Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of children of school age in the country is often perpetrated by people they know and occurs mostly in their homes and schools. There are frequent reports in the media of male teachers sexually assaulting their female students. Girls are often reluctant to report the attacks to their parents, and social pressure often prevents them from going to the authorities. A 2014 survey conducted in Somalia reported that 27 percent of school girls interviewed stated their teachers had pressured them for sex, 25 percent stated they know at least one teacher having an affair with a school girl, and 79 percent stated they were sexually harassed by male classmates.
Our broad objectives are:
• To increase opportunities that will create a forum for sharing ideas, experience and learning about SRGBV among community members (students, parents, teachers and other stakeholders).
• To provide services and referral systems for psychological counseling, medical support and services for victims and their parents.
• To provide training in counseling to community volunteers, peer counselors and teachers.
Specifically, we will:
• Sensitize the school community on SRGBV, what it is, the effects, and what should be done.
• Provide training in counselling skills.
• Set up efficient counselling services
• Employ case managers, train them and
• Set up a branch of the GVSSN
Through this program, we hope to create / increase awareness about the existence of SRGBV in the proposed communities through a sensitization outreach as our initial step towards addressing the issues of SRGBV. This will be achieved by partnering with the advocacy group of the project.
The main objective of the proposed project is to provide quality counseling services to children and youth who are victims of school related gender based violence. The grant requested will also be used to provide training in counseling to stakeholders of the target community in order to enable them to counsel the students themselves. The target population is forty schools selected in the Eastern Region from four communities. Ten schools will be used as a control group and the remaining thirty as the sample size. 01/2
A critical success factor for ADI is the ability to form collaborative partnership with existing organizations. A successful intervention must be multidisciplinary, proactive and well co-coordinated – successful interventions must include attorneys who are able to provide legal support services, doctors who will document wounds and testify to their findings, police and social welfare professionals to ensure physical safety and mental health professionals to ensure psychological healing. All these groups working as a network can provide reliable and successful support system.
Set up an efficient monitoring and evaluating system, in which qualitative and quantitative data will be gathered, collected and analyzed.
ADI also hopes to strengthen any existing counselling, services available in the proposed community in addressing school related gender based violence, and to learn from and build on any weaknesses.