A "safe space" is a safe place where girls will regularly meet in a group, so that they are able to build friendships with other girls in the group. These safe spaces will also help the girls build trusting friendships with their mentors and will be able to turn to the mentors when they have a problem. Safe space meetings will also help girls reduce their vulnerability to sexual harassment and violence.
One critical piece of preventing gender based violence among adolescent girls is create and support safes spaces for girls, within the school setting, where they can build social, human, and economic assets – learning basic health and financial education, as well as an understanding of their rights and an increase in their self-esteem. The Population Council is helping to support, monitor, and evaluate the Safe Spaces cluster within the TAAAC Coalition. This cluster, also including CAMFED, FAWEZA, YWCA, and PPAZ, will work in six Lusaka schools to implement these programs for girls, as well as involving mentors, teachers, and parents. The core of this program will involve girls meeting weekly in groups, facilitated by a mentor. Mentors running safe spaces will have a better understanding of girls’ rights and issues and will be able to address their concerns, provide appropriate referrals, and implement strategies to build girls’ assets;
Population Council collected data on teachers and students according to their sex in the Safe Space schools. These schools include: Munali Girls High School, Chazanga Basic School, Kamwala High School, Chongwe Basic School and Kamulanga High School.
Next Population council guided the safe spaces on how to recruit most vulnerable girls in the safe space program by using a checklist questionnaire, which includes questions on age, grade, living situation, if their parents are alive, if they have ever being absent from school and why , and if their community is violent or not. Organizations used this information to select the most vulnerable girls at each school to participate in the program.
During the recruitment of the girls the safe space cluster also organized sensitization meetings with the teachers and community members to share with them about the program. The Safe Space program was very welcomed and they pledged their support.
Population Council, in consultation with the safe spaces cluster, compiled a curriculum with topics on human rights, reproductive health and contraceptives, relationships, life skills, HIV/AIDS and STIs, gender and gender based violence, financial education, and substance abuse. This curriculum will be used both to train the group mentors and for use during the weekly sessions with the girls in the 5 schools.
Adolescent Girls Capacity Building and Program Design Workshop
From March 1st – 4th, the Population Council hosted a workshop on Adolescent Girls Capacity Building and Program Design. The purpose of the workshop was to help Zambian NGOs and CBOs to understand the best practices of adolescent girls programs and work with them to develop high quality program plans to reach vulnerable adolescent girls within their own programs. Some groups already had girl-only programming and were looking to strengthen or expand their work; some groups were developing a girl-only program component for the first time. The workshop included sessions on asset building, savings and financial education, working with parents/communities, recruitment, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising, and more.
Among the 15 organizations who participated were the four organizations from the Safe Spaces Cluster – YWCA Lusaka, CAMFED, PPAZ, and FAWEZA. These four organizations used the opportunity to work closely with girls programming experts to develop their program design for the safe spaces program that will be carried out under the TAAAC activities.
Upcoming event: 2nd week of September 2010 - training of mentors in the 5 schools where the safe spaces program is being implemented.
No comments:
Post a Comment