Needs Assessment in the Safe Spaces

In order to understand and appreciate students' knowledge about issues of sexual violence against girls, TAAAC partners developed a survey, which was administered to the  Safe Spaces participants during scheduled sessions. Both girls and boys from 6 Safe Spaces schools participated. Lotus Basic was excluded for scheduling reasons.

This exercise was conducted between February and March 2011. Data entry and analysis was completed between March/April 2011. Students also were presented several statements to gauge their attitudes about gender roles and sexual violence. Statements were either gender-inequitable (“women lie about rape to punish men”) or gender-equitable. More on this soon. Keep visiting the TAAAC blog. Picture below showing partners sharing their Needs Assessment results with population other partners.Population Council will soon be undertaking the Knowledge Attitude and Practice (KAP) Survey. 

TAAAC Participates in the Youth Day Celebrations

Zambia National Women's Lobby Chongwe Basic School Boys Network joins the rest of the Zambian youths in celebrating this year's Youth Day.

Chongwe Boys Network march  with other schools from Chongwe District .

A boy from Chongwe Basic School displaying PPAZ's Referral Guide for Sexual Violence Service Providers

YWCA Kamwala High School Safe Space Girls participates in the Youth Day Celebrations

‘’Dialogue and Mutual Understanding’’ is the best practice that we the youths of Zambia can adopt but it comes with many challenges; if youths have to engage into dialogue and mutual understanding, they need leadership skills; at the same time a lot of youths have acquired the leadership skills and are ready to take up leadership roles and participate in decision making processes, but  there is need to create favorable structures that will allow youths to seek audience and be heard if we have to engage in dialogue and mutual understanding.

To interpret the theme, youths conducted focus group discussions a Kamwala High school, Lotus Basic and Marian Shrine Orphanage to empower youths with leadership skills to enable them dialogue  and have mutual understanding rather  than  resorting to rioting which may cause long term consequences. The youths were also taught on how to make sisal bags to enable them raise money for their school fees instead of engaging into harmful vices to raise money for school fees. (See pictures below)

TOPICS COVERED:

• Ø  Self Awareness
• Ø  Interpreting the theme Dialogue and Mutual Understanding
• Ø  Leadership skills

  

Empowerment skills on learning how to make sisal bags and table mats. 

Importance of learning a skill:

Ø  Youths or school girls and boys face a lot of challenges in rising school fees or their transport money to and from school. Other youths walk long distance with no food to get to the school and back home. Most youths come from poor families who cannot afford to provide for all their needs, while other youths head their own homes due to the loss of their parents. Such skills will enable youths to rise abit of money to pay for their school fees or transport money instead of engaging into harmful vices in order to raise money.

Ø   Youths will be able to teach their parents at home about this skill so that they are able to do it together and raise more money for the family too.

Ø  Such skills enables youths to also have a sense of responsibility, they are response for their own lives and have to do it wisely. This is a skill that can be expanded more after they complete their education as they wait for results because that is the period when most school leavers go world and engage in all sorts of harmful behaviors

"Safe Spaces Cluster" - Population Council at Work in the Coalition

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.

TAAAC on Joy FM Talk Show

The directive banning male teachers from conducting tuition for girls from their homes which was issued by the Minister of Education, Hon. Dora Siliya at the ZAMWA Journalists Media Training Workshop on August 10, 2010 has generated a lot of interest in the country. The workshop is part of the many activities being funded by the UN Trust Fund under the project, "Our Girls, Our Future, Building Synergy to end Violence against Adolescent Girls in Zambia."


In issuing the directive, Hon. Siliya (pictured above) noted some male teachers were using home tuitions to lure girls into sexual activities. This directive has been given extensive media coverage in both the print and electronic media, and responses from the cross section of our society to these media houses have continued to pour in. On August 11th, the TAAAC Coordinator/Consultant, Shupe Makashinyi featured on a radio talk show hosted by Emmanuel Mulenga of Joy FM Radio (106.9 MHz). Other people who were featured on the programme were Ms. Catherine Chinunda, Deputy General Secretary of the Zambia National Union of Teachers (ZNUT), and Mr. Erick Mwale, Director, Research and Workers Education, representing the Secondary School Teachers Union of Zambia (SESTUZ). The three interviewees discussed the subject of sexual abuse against adolescent girls and the Minister of Education's directive banning home tuition.


All the three interviewees welcomed the Minister of Education's directive and underscored the significant role it will play in scaling down incidences of sexual abuse of adolescent girls in schools. Although the teachers' union representatives downplayed the prevalence of this problem among teachers, Mrs. Makashinyi maintained that what is obtaining on the ground is cause for worry.

She highlighted some of the comprehensive sexual and health related services that are provided to young people by coalition members such as the PPAZ. She encouraged parents and guardians of school-attending children to immediately report cases of sexual abuse to the police and also seek immediate help for the victim of abuse attention at the One Stop Centre based at the University Teaching Hospital. She called for the formulation and legally enforceable code of conduct for teachers in order to make our schools safe environments for the girl child and restrain would be offenders.

It is gratifying to note that the Zambian government is recognising and acknowledging that cases of sexual violence against girls is also being perpetrated by people to whom parents entrust their children for the better part of the day. TAAAC Zambia will continue to play its critical role of advocacy and influence policy and legal reform in order to obtain justice for victims of sexual abuse and safeguard the welfare of our children.