Learning Initiative on PVAC

Projects

Projects Learning Initiative on PVAC

Learning Initiative on PVAC

Project Rationale

According to the UNICEF Annual Report 2020, most children in Uganda have experienced physical violence that threatens and halts their holistic and positive development – 59 per cent of girls and 68 per cent of boys.

In Kenya, 76% of young women and nearly 80% of young men aged 18–24 years experienced at least one type of violence (sexual, physical, or emotional) before the age of 18 years, while in Tanzania, nearly 3 in 10 girls and approximately 1 in 7 boys in Tanzania have experienced violence prior to the age of 18 in school settings.

Despite the high incidences, evidence from around the world shows that Violence Against Children (VAC) can be prevented.

It is upon this that Impact and Innovations Development Centre (IIDC) prioritises a learning-oriented approach to programming to ensure that good practices in prevention of violence against children (PVAC) are escalated and those interventions that are not working are dropped or modified.

IIDC in partnership with Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and eight implementing partner organizations embarked on a learning initiative for prevention of violence against children in East Africa. IIDC provides technical assistance in facilitating learning among the partners covering both core impactful programming themes (adaptation, quality designs, results and impact measurement, evidence generation and documentation) and PVAC technical areas.

The Learning Initiative has led to improvement in program refinement, measurement, learning, adaptation, scale up and knowledge sharing and in turn, this has led to a reduction in VAC prevalence in the regions where partners operate.

Summary of the initiative
- Goal

To create an enabling environment where children are safe and protected from all forms of violence in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda).

2.2 Objective

To ensure that the actors in East Africa are implementing evidence based and impactful interventions to prevent VAC.
To enhance the internal capacity of implementing partners in the areas of evidence-based programming;

To support partners to improve the measurability of their interventions.

Programme activities

IIDC has coordinated activities for building a learning culture among partner organisations and these include:

Organising annual learning convenings for partners to learn from the experiences of others through proven evidence of workable interventions on VAC, then emulate and adopt in their programming.
Providing tools to conduct organisational learning and capacity assessments. This exercise has enabled Partners to identify and prioritize organization-wide learning needs.
Established a safe online space VaCNets Virtual Hub to serve as a central repository and networking platform on promising practices and emerging evidence on prevention of violence against children (VAC) work in East Africa, as reflected HERE
Twining of organisations to scale up tested models through joint collaborations.
Working with governments to address priority gaps in legislation, strategies and guidelines to protect children and women from abuse, violence and exploitation.

2.4 Facts about the reduction in VAC as a result of the learning Initiative (outcomes)

The Tanzania Government recognized CSOs for their work with the Ministry of Community Development to reinforce key actions against all types of violence against women and children, including review of the National Plan of Action on Violence Against Women and Children

Our partner HakiElimu partnered with research institutions and Universities in Tanzania to generate evidence on VAC in schools and based on that, they adapted the Good Schools Program (GSP) from Raising Voices (Uganda) after learning that the GSP addressed VAC in Ugandan schools.

Investing in Children and their Societies (ICS-SP) partnered with research institutions i.e The National Institute for Medical Research and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to conduct a Randomized Control Trial for the Skillful Parenting Model and for the Whole School Approach to VAC prevention.

Thanks to the Good Schools tool kit introduced in schools by Raising Voices, Child Protection Desks (CPD) were created in schools, a platform used to raise awareness about Violence Against Children (VAC) among students, teachers and parents and as a result, there is increased self-confidence of children with assured protection from the CPD.