Leverage the fight against gender based violence and teenage pregnancy

Fighting Gender Based Violence and reducing school dropouts due to Teenage Pregnancy

NATICC has gone through a great organisational development process during the last few years. They have shown outstanding committment and have built up a supporting network (schools, churches, courts, local leadership, police, social wellfare etc.) facilitating and potentially sustaining the fight against gender based violence (GBV) and teenage pregnancy (TP) in the Shiselweni region. Compared to the last project phases supported by sahee Act(ion) against gender based violence and child abuse and The Children's Protection and Welfare Act 2012: weapon against child abuse this project phase reaches out to many more communities while increasing the focus on the system and its key stakeholders. Working actively towards a sustainable impact a main focus of this project phase is to capacitate systemic stakeholders, like rural health motivators, community police, home based carers, teachers, pastors and the Chiefdom Inner Councils.
In schools NATICC establishes school clubs and capacitates their members in order for them to detect violence against children and teenage pregnancies in an early stage and to refer them to supporting institutions. The teachers are equally capacitated and shall support the activities of the school clubs and act as focal referral points in their respective schools.
Through church dialogues NATICC raises awareness of church leaders (church committees and boards) in order for them to become GBV and TP prevention advocates within their churches and the surrounding communities. They shall use their positions and powerful voices to raise awareness and influence behavior change amongst their congregants.
Awareness raising and capacity building in community dialogues shall further lead to...
...the police pro-actively referring GBV survivors to the project for psycho-social services, court preparation and support.
...social workers taking ownership of the GBV and TP prevention and response activities in the communities and acting as catalysts for change in their respective communities.
...Community Inner Councils acting as catalysts for GBV and TP prevention activities in their respective communities. They shall denounce GBV and TP during community meetings and amplify the voices of the social services.

Main Objectives of the project:
Objective 1: Increase individual access to information and education on GBV, Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA), Violence Against Children (VAC), and TP.
Objective 2: reduce incidence rate of teen pregnancy among school going adolescents in the Shiselweni Region (Gege, Zombodze, and Matsanjeni) and mitigate the impact on those who are already affected through the provision of comprehensive services.
Objective 3: To empower local stakeholders to combat GBV and reduce the high incidence of school drop outs due to teenage pregnancies.

Project site

Nhlangano (Map)

Beneficiaries

Women: 11'610 direct, 25'806 indirect
Men: 11'110 direct, 24'695 indirect
Children under age 16: 7498 direct, 16665 indirect

Project costs and assistance by sahee

The entire project costs are CHF 1’220’000.–, whereas sahee takes over CHF 65’000.–.

sahee stays in regular contact with the project leaders, monitors the activities and visits the project on site once a year.

Duration of assistance

1st of January 2023 to 31st of December 2027

Local counterpart

Nhlangano AIDS Training and Information Centre (NATICC)

Project site

naticc.org.sz