Raising Voices creates and publishes resources designed to strengthen the practice and discourse on the prevention of violence against women and children. All materials are free for download and available for non-profit use.
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A Guide for Feminist Practice in Violence against Women and Girls Research Collaborations
This guide, developed with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, is designed to support activist and feminist civil society organizations in LMICs to navigate and build meaningful, long lasting collaborations in VAWG research. This guidance can also support research organizations and donors to foster more equitable power dynamics within these partnerships. It is our hope that both activist organizations and researchers can grow through researching and learning together in a way that recognizes and values diverse forms of knowledge and experiences, and mutually upholds partners’ agency throughout the process.
Community Mobilization Activities for VAW Prevention During COVID-19
As activist organizations around the world adapt to the new realities of preventing violence against women during COVID-19, Raising Voices developed a series of activities to support safe and relevant community engagement. Any organization can use, translate, adapt and integrate these materials into their ongoing prevention programming.
Infographic: Preventing VAW During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Activist organizations are leading the way in adapting to COVID-related realities. This infographic illustrates how 111 activist organizations across the Global South are speaking up, stepping up, keeping in real, and calling for action to prevent violence against women during this time.
Overview: Series on Preventing VAW During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This Guidance Notes focuses on how organizations can prepare to best support staff, communities, and women at increased risk of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This Guidance Note summarizes several core dimensions affecting women’s safety and basic rights during COVID-19, in the hope of galvanizing attention for VAW mitigation and prevention.
This Guidance Note focuses on how organizations can prepare to best support staff, our communities, and women at increased risk of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Note 3: How can we amplify self and collective care?
This Guidance Note focuses on how organizations can prepare to best support staff, our communities, and women at increased risk of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This Guidance Note offers ideas for how violence against women (VAW) prevention organizations can safely continue program activities and mitigate COVID-19 specific risks for women.
Note 5: How can SASA! / SASA! Faith / SASA! Together adapt?
Guidance Note 5 provides programmatic suggestions for adjusting your SASA! program to better align with, and address, emerging realities during the pandemic. Note: we use “SASA!” to represent all SASA! / SASA! Faith / SASA! Together programming.
Preventing Violence against Women: A Primer for African Women’s Organizations
This primer, developed with the African Women’s Development Fund, explores a feminist approach to preventing violence against women, outlines current evidence and unpacks key controversies in VAW prevention programming. It seeks to support the leadership and participation of African women’s organizations in advancing VAW prevention grounded in feminist politics.
SASA! Faith is an initiative in which leaders, members and believers of a religion come together to prevent violence against women and HIV. It mobilizes faith communities and inspires everyone to live the faith based values of justice, peace and dignity in their intimate relationships.
SASA! An Activist Kit for Preventing Violence against Women and HIV
SASA! is a comprehensive and user-friendly program tool to help organizations, institutions, and groups interested in mobilizing communities to prevent violence against women and HIV
To request more information about getting started with SASA!, contact us.
The Good School Toolkit is designed to help educators explore what a good school is and guide them through a process that will help them create one. With the help of schools in Uganda, we deliberately focused on ideas and activities that do not require specific financial resources—just commitment and perseverance to create something extraordinary.
Mobilising Communities to Prevent Domestic Violence: A Resource Guide for Organisations in East and Southern Africa
The Resource Guide was Raising Voices’ first methodology and was globally one of the first long-term, documented approaches for community-based domestic violence prevention.
Rethinking Domestic Violence: A Training Process for Community Activists
The Training Process to serve as a tool for strengthening the capacity of NGO staff, community members and service providers to prevent domestic violence.
In Her Shoes is an interactive, educational exercise used in a workshop setting to help participants connect to the day-to-day reality for women experiencing violence, deepen our empathy and compel us to take action.
Get Moving! is a reflective process for member organizations to strengthen the understanding and commitment of individuals and organizations to the core values of violence prevention work–equality and non-violence.
This brief can be used by organizations doing VAC prevention work. It can guide your organization during program design and implementation or help make improvements to your existing VAC prevention programs. It can also be used by policymakers and donors to inform recommendations they make to their grantees.
This Program Brief provides guidance for program designers, TA providers, donors, practitioners and activists exploring whether to take SASA! Together to scale and if so, how to do so in a way that maintains the integrity of SASA! Together and remains accountable to women and communities. It is our hope that this Brief can foster ethical and effective implementation of SASA! Together at scale.
The Learning From Practice series is a collection of articles that synthesize perspectives and activism emerging from Raising Voices’ experience in preventing violence against women and children.
Organizational Perspectives – learnings from the journey of Raising Voices
Dadaab, Kenya Case Study: Learning from SASA! Adaptations in a Humanitarian Context
Humanitarian settings have distinct structures, characteristics and practices that will influence SASA!’s adaptation and implementation. Findings highlight unique aspects within the humanitarian refugee camp context which require specific consideration, including frequent disruptions and mobility (with implications for SASA! timeframes), the role of RCWs and material incentives, and the opportunity for organized, comprehensive engagement of community members.
Jacmel, Haiti Case Study: Learning from SASA! Adaptations in a Caribbean Setting
This case study presents findings from SASA! implementation research in Haiti. Haiti has a long history of resilience in the face of colonialism, political oppression, and widespread destruction from natural hazards. Haiti was the first nation to fully abolish slavery (in 1793), which, coupled with its independence from France in 1804, helped inspire a global anti-slavery movement.
Kigoma, Tanzania Case Study: Learning from SASA! Adaptations in a Rural Setting
WPC’s experience in Kigoma highlights how the community-based approach of SASA! is advantageous in a rural setting where social connections are strong, people are long-term residents and easy to find near their home or fields for activities.
This report summarizes findings from a 2018 study to assess Beyond Borders’ TA to Haitian partner organizations using the SASA! methodology, gathering insights and experiences from long-term TA partners and participants in short-term training courses.
Learning from SASA! Adaptations in Diverse Contexts: A Summary Brief
The experiences of Beyond Borders in Haiti, IRC in Kenya, and WPC in Tanzania demonstrate that SASA! is adaptable in diverse settings, with the potential to provoke personal and organizational reflection, shift harmful attitudes and behaviors, and prevent violence against women.
Jacmel, Haiti Case Study: Learning from SASA! Adaptations in a Caribbean Setting (summary)
Findings from this case study highlight unique aspects of adapting and implementing SASA! for contexts like Haiti, such as communities with a more oral than written culture, those where personal relationships and community ties are stronger than institutions, and cultures with significant scepticism about foreign organizations and their interventions.
Kigoma, Tanzania Case Study: Learning from SASA! Adaptations in a Rural Setting (summary)
WPC’s experience in Kigoma highlights how SASA!’s community-based approach is advantageous in a rural setting where people are long-time residents and easy to find near their home or fields. The social connectedness of the community provides an opportune environment for SASA! adaptation and implementation. This case study reaffirms that community-wide mobilization and engagement is a viable and potentially transformative VAW prevention approach within rural sub-Saharan Africa.
This report summarizes findings from a 2018 study to assess Beyond Borders’ TA to Haitian partner organizations using the SASA! methodology, gathering insights and experiences from long-term TA partners and participants in short-term training courses.
The Feminist Zines were developed in collaboration with Just Associates and Furia based on a convening with feminist activists from around the world.
Movement Building
A movement is not just a network, or actors, or organizations, but a weaving together of all of these components; tied together with influencers, direct actions; sewn with continuous consciousness-raising and lobbying; grounded by reflection.
Our bodies experience the world differently according to the social characteristics or identities that make up who we are: race, ethnicity, gender, class, mobility, ability, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, origin, and religion.
We reflect on and appreciate the different forms of resistance that are within our movements, especially from women and girls working in repressive contexts.
Well-being is not a burden or a luxury, it is an individual and collective need. The personal is political. As activists and movement builders, but mostly, as women, caring for our sisters and ourselves needs to be part of our daily actions, our daily political actions.
Towards a Feminist Understanding of Intersecting Violence against Women and Children in the Family
Based on discussions with 106 mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, we explore lived experiences of intersecting IPV-VAC, and the attitudes and social norms that often normalize this violence. Read the article here.
Revising the Script: Taking Community Mobilization to Scale for Gender Equality
This exploratory study by International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Raising Voices aims to inform the nascent conversation about the challenges of applying the “innovate, evaluate, scale up” script in one compelling field of recent innovation: community mobilization approaches to address socially and politically sensitive issues, particularly but not exclusively intimate partner violence. The publication explores current thought in scaling up through a literature review, a more in-depth exploration of five organizations/initiatives and their perception of opportunities and dilemmas in scaling up community mobilization approaches, lessons learned, and reflections for moving forward in this new terrain.
This Learning Paper describes a domestic violence prevention initiative driven through the voice of the Catholic Church of Uganda. The learnings from this initiative have provoked broad reflection about the power of faith in many countries of the Global South, and thus the potential of accelerating positive change at scale through effective collaboration with faith institutions. This is a joint publication of Trocaire and Raising Voices.
In this publication, the Network celebrates their 10th anniversary by featuring the amazing members, friends and allies who have walked this journey. This booklet puts the spotlight on women and men who are the heart and soul of our activism, devoting their lives to preventing violence against women in their homes, communities and societies.
Community Mobilization: Preventing Partner Violence by Changing Social Norms
This paper outlines the distinguishing qualities of community mobilization as a unique, long-term approach in the primary prevention of partner violence.
This publications is a summary of the SASA! Activist Kit and how it came to be. Raising Voices and partners reflect upon the background that brought SASA! to life, explain the contents and phased approach, and share stories of how the approach is currently being used in diverse communities.
Positive Discipline: Alternatives to Corporal Punishment
This handbook introduces the concept of positive discipline and provides a detailed understanding of the issue, its role in education, and its impact on children.
This publication provides an in-depth exploration of the SASA! approach for addressing the twin pandemic of Violence against Women and HIV, focusing on the importance of addressing the power imbalance between women and men.
Approaching old problems in new ways: community mobilisation as a primary prevention strategy to combat violence against women
This article describes comprehensive community mobilization as an approach and argues that it is essential if we are to see meaningful, sustained change on the issue of violence against women. It also describes the theoretical underpinnings of the approach and illustrates how these come to life in day-to-day programming in communities.
Creating Safer Schools: Lessons Learned; Strategies for Action
Raising Voices in collaboration with The Ford Foundation hosted a dialogue on what is a safe school and how can we create one. This publication presents the discussion and ideas that emerged from that forum.
This is an electronic version of an article published in Article 19, volume 2, number 2, October 2006. A publication of University of the Western Cape available online at: www.communitylawcentre.org.za
Strengthening Regional Work on Gender-Based Violence
This report presents the background, findings and insights of a unique program designed to address gender-based violence through collaborations between research institutions and community-based organizations in the Horn, East and Southern Africa.
Violence against Children: The Voices of Ugandan Children and Adults
This publication discusses a research study in 2004 undertaken in five districts in Uganda. Over 1400 children discuss the various types of violence they experience at home, schools and in the community. The study also reports on discussions with almost 1100 adults about how they perceive punishment and discipline, mistreatment and how they too feel about the issues.
Preventing Gender-based Violence in the Horn, East and Southern Africa: A Regional Dialogue
This publication emerged from a Regional Dialogue on GBV Prevention held in Kampala in 2003. The publication highlights the work of over 15 organizations working in the regions in areas such as community mobilization, awareness raising, engaging men, media, strengthening community-based institutions and bridging the gap with local authorities.
Voices on Violence is a 15 minute advocacy film about violence against children in Uganda. Four children tell their experiences of violence and the impact it has on their lives. We also hear from parents, community members and school administrators as they discuss the negative impact violence has on children.
Through My Eyes is a 60 minute film divided into 4 segments of 15 minutes each telling four stories of children from different parts of Uganda. Each story is told from the child’s perspective and portrays their struggle to retain their dignity in the face of violence against them. All four stories are based on true events as reported to us.
The Approach in Action: A Training Video for Organisations in East and Southern Africa
This training video is an invitation into community organizing. The Approach in Action allows organizations to see first-hand what community mobilization and its activities look like by highlighting the work of two NGOs that were pioneering the approach.
The SASA! film is a 30-minute documentary that explores the connections between violence, HIV and power in women’s lives. This film is an inspiring look at two women’s lives and a call to action for everyone to begin working to prevent violence against women and HIV infection now.
This film documents four stories told from children’s perspectives. Each story focuses on a child’s struggle to make adults come face to face with the truth –that violence against children degrades everyone, including the perpetrator.
