Life Skills and Life Stories Initiative, Africa: 2013

Empowerment of women is one of the objectives of the Punya Foundation. Giving continuity to the last year’s women empowerment program, this year the Foundation has in collaboration with the Kanere News started empowerment of rape victims and other forms of Gender Based Violence (GBV) through development of life skills. Background: In the Kakuma refugee camps,...

Empowerment of women is one of the objectives of the Punya Foundation. Giving continuity to the last year’s women empowerment program, this year the Foundation has in collaboration with the Kanere News started empowerment of rape victims and other forms of Gender Based Violence (GBV) through development of life skills.

Background: In the Kakuma refugee camps, violence against women in the form of sexual assaults including rape occurs very frequently. However, due the lower socioeconomic status and lack of protective mechanisms in the refugee camps, women rarely report these atrocities. Even if a woman dares to report a case of abuse, most of the time, owing to the complex legal procedures she gets exposed to their community leading to stigmatisation and isolation. The incidents of abuses therefore remain unreported and women suffer silently. Realising this, the Foundation in collaboration with the Kenare Free news is organising a women empowerment program targeting the victims of gender-based violence, including rape.

Program description: The planned project will involve women victims of rape and those others who are at risk. The activity will be directed to sexually abused women of mixed age from mixed nationalities in a secure and in a pace of their confidence. The project shall run in two phases. In the first phase, the victims shall tell their life stories in small groups about the abuses they encountered. They shall share their sufferings. Following the sharing sessions, women shall brainstorm to identify locally available and context specific defence mechanisms. In the second phase of the project, the victims shall be guided to write their stories in their own words.

Short term and long term outcomes

  1. The expected outcome of this program is to identify and record the nature of violence occurring in the Kakuma refugee camps.
  2. Through the fieldwork, women who have suffered sexual assaults and those at risk will have a chance to meet with staff of the Kanere News for information and defense.
  3. The life skills training will give the women victim of sexual abuse an opportunity to air their views and to ventilate their sufferings through story telling/writing.
  4. The empowerment program shall build confidence in victims to speak up for themselves, than only other humanitarian organisations speaking on their behave.

 Modality of implementation

  1. The staff of the Kanere Free News organised meetings to plan the implementation of the empowerment project. In consultation with the Foundation, the Kanere Free News decided to organise the project in 2 phases; first phase encompasses ventilation and story telling and in the second phase the victims shall be empowered to write their stories down.
  2. The Kanere team and women volunteers approached the GBV individually and through telephone and informed them about the program.
  3. Safe, secured and conducive program venue is identified with in the reach of the target population.
  4. Dealing with the issue of sexual issues and that of sexual assaults is a very sensitive. To run the project in a professional manner and to meet the need of the participants, the implementing partner identified the local expert in the issue of GBV and rape. The objectives of the project have been discussed and the expert invited to guide the victims during the process of ventilation of the encountered abuses and during the story telling process. Emphasis has been given during the phase of planning that a woman telling her story shall get enough time not only to tell her story, but also to reflect and to get back to herself.
  5. The participants evaluated each session and the collected feedbacks used to improve the next session.
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