Properly resourcing women’s organizations to better prevent and end sexual violence against girls in Nigeria.
Sexual Offences Awareness and Response (SOAR) Initiative is a small, women-led NGO which aims to prevent sexual abuse of children and to empower survivors, through advocacy with community leaders and government actors, capacity building of all stakeholders and supporting survivors with psychosocial services, medical aid and access to justice. A twice-funded grantee, SOAR Initiative is currently implementing a project that addresses sexual violence against girls in internally displaced people camps and host communities, in the context of COVID-19. The project works on strengthening community child protection structures and uses community-based mechanisms to build the capacity of in and out-of-school girls as well as local peer leaders, to raise awareness and provide support to survivors. This project is built upon a previous project supported by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund).
We spoke with Chinyere Eyoh, Founder and Executive Director of SOAR Initiative.
SOAR has received two UN Trust Fund grants (in cycle 20 and in cycle 24) for projects aimed at preventing sexual violence against girls. How is the second-generation project different from the first, and how do the results from the first project inform the project this time around?
Prior to 2017 when we received our first grant from the UN Trust Fund, our interventions focused on building safe spaces in schools where girls are empowered to protect themselves and advocate against sexual violence. However, the feedback we received was that girls were being sexually abused from home and in their communities. We therefore used this grant to mobilize communities to establish structures and mechanisms that helped identify and appropriately respond to such violations as human rights abuse outside of school settings. We also built the capacity of girls to be part of the solution as advocates against sexual violence in their communities and schools. The pilot was successful, and we have started replicating this intervention in other communities.
This second round of funding enables us to test this community mobilization approach in internally displaced peoples’ camps and schools in Benue State (Nigeria). We are also working with adolescent mothers, and men and boys as allies and agents of change, a missing component in the first project.
Why do you think this community-based approach is important to effect changes in attitudes and behaviours regarding violence against women and girls?
Evidence generated and lessons learnt from similar interventions and our experience in the field reveal that an increased knowledge of community peer leaders, on how gender norms perpetuate violence and to identify which specific norms in their communities violate girls, does improve their attitudes, behaviours and practices.
In addition, our entire strategy relies heavily on engaging various community and peer groups in designing the structures and mechanisms needed to address sexual and gender-based violence against adolescent girls in the communities and camps where we work. By using this approach, members of the community-based child protection committees are selected by the community themselves, while Female Mentors are nominated by adolescent girls or personally volunteer. This participatory approach is further used to encourage community ownership, thereby ensuring sustainability of the results achieved.
How has the UN Trust Fund’s support helped build your organizational resilience?
The multi-year funding we received from the UN Trust Fund gave us the time and resources to strengthen our strategy and make it more targeted at the issues we address. This increased our relevance and results in the communities we work with, which also directly improved the visibility of our organization and interventions. Our partnerships with the government and other donors were also strengthened, which increased our access to more support and institutional funding.
I must also mention that exposure at networking events, capacity building workshops and technical support received from the UN Trust Fund, strengthened our internal and financial operations and exposed us to other opportunities and best practices in sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response.
The second-round of funding from the UN Trust Fund has further improved our resilience, as we are now also using our tested community mobilisation strategy to address sexual violence against vulnerable adolescent girls affected by conflict in internally displaced peoples’ camps in Benue State.
Why is core and flexible funding important for organizations such as yours? What would be your recommendation to donors on best modalities in supporting civil society and especially women’s rights organizations like yours and grassroots work in the communities?
An adage in my country says: “You can’t shave a person’s head in their absence.” This speaks to the fact that, in this instance, no one understands the issues and pain that women go through like women themselves. At grassroots levels, small women-led and women’s rights organizations understand the issues, are challenging inequitable socio-cultural norms, empowering other women and girls to stand up for themselves, working with survivors and generally advancing women’s rights despite poor funding and other barriers they face.
It is therefore imperative that donors be deliberate about dedicating a percentage of their grants to small women’s organizations through core, flexible and multi-year funding. In addition, it is important that donors also provide much needed technical support as further commitment to building the capacity of these organizations to access grants and implement stronger interventions.
Without this deliberateness, small organizations will simply fall between the cracks and not have the much-needed support required to remain afloat and thrive in the same fund-seeking space as the bigger organizations.
Learn more about the inspiring work of SOAR Initiative:
