Project Info
This project was funded by the PISCCA fund (Projets Innovants des Sociétés Civiles et Coalitions d’Acteurs), a support mechanism for Cameroonian civil society of the French Embassy in Cameroon.
Implementing Partners
Project Background
In Cameroon, SGBV has been a major threat to development of the girl child. Cameroon has a 51% lifetime physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence prevalence, 33% physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in the last 12 months prevalence, a lifetime non-partner sexual violence prevalence, a 31% child marriage rate, and a 1% Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting prevalence. These stark results represent one of the worst in Africa and globally. These results gave been further worsened by multiple conflicts currently affecting Cameroon.
Project Objectives
The objective of this project is to investigate the role of culture and conflict in sexual gender-based violence in women and girls in Cameroon.
Project Implementation
Method
Reviews:
- A review of best practices in SGBV was carried out; a review of policies, a review of interventions and a review of movements
- From the reviews of interventions, we identified gaps and developed best practices and the #DecryptAndFix strategy to fight against SGBV
Stakeholder Engagement
- A stakeholder mapping and analysis was carried out based on power and interest and the stakeholders were selected based on the mapping and analysis
- From the analysis, there was a stakeholder engagement through; stakeholder sessions, Focus Group Discussions, and Key Informant Interviews
#DecryptAndFix strategy (Innovations)
- We developed 5 innovations from results of our review; storytelling, cyber health platform, school clubs, radio programs and income generating activities (which is implemented in the North and funded by Organisation International de la Francophonie)
- Storytelling are traditional methods of telling stories which communicates scientific findings to the non-literate population in the form of songs, drama, poems, and gather experiences from the community and share them in the form of drama
- The cyber health platform which is mobile and web app (Kwik Klik) is an innovative approach that uses mobile phones, crowd sourced data and artificial intelligence (AI) on SGBV within a community, the app can connect SGBV victims from the privacy of their phones to emergency social, legal, and medical care, Kwik Klik keeps users connected to services
- The school clubs will build youth leadership, sensitize children on the dangers of SGBV and strengthen the reporting of School Related SGBV.
- The radio programs sensitize the population on the forms of SGBV, services (legal, clinical, and psychosocial) that are available for survivors of SGBV, encourage the community not to stigmatize survivors and build up referral pathway for reporting cases of SGBV.
- Engagement of policy makers
- There was capacity building of teachers, policy makers/local authorities and engagement of policy makers in developing partnerships between eBASE and concerned ministries
- There was also a call to action for data for Francophone Africa because most studies are carried out in French regions but are reported in English
Project Evaluation
Results and perspectives
Results:
- 70 stakeholders gave different approaches for which their various communities can be reached out to.
- 20,000+ community members in the North, East, North West, and South West regions demonstrated improved knowledge of SRSGBV and SGBV issues, as well as legal redress mechanisms, following participation on radio programs which lasted for 3 months in the North West and North, storytelling events.
- 1000+ girls and boys have been reached out to, through school clubs and child protection programs that were carried out in the various regions
- 50 persons have registered to the Kwik Klik app and 40 reports and counting have been received on the app.
- Partnerships have been established with North West regional assembly and eBASE will be working with the regional assembly to use data to support more effective implementation of policies and laws. eBASE has also established partnerships with MINESEC, MINEDUB, MINPROFF, MINAS, MINJEC, MINSANTE, MINEDUB and MINESEC.
- 4 TIDieR documents have been prepared for these 4 innovations; Storytelling, Community Radio Broadcasting, Cyberhealth and school clubs.
Download the full report HERE
Perspectives:
- There is plan for the scale out on the various interventions based the acceptability and feasibility of the pilot phase implemented
- From the reviews and results, blogs and videos for documentary are being developed, conferences and webinars will be organised and also publications in journals and books on the various interventions
Further Fundings
Grand Challenges Canada: Storytelling
The project has built enough data for potential scale out of the project. eBASE was granted funds from Grand Challenge Canada to extent storytelling especially in the Ntanka region. From the findings of these studies, data on SGBV will continually be collected on the cyber health platform.
Organisation International de la Francophonie
The project also identified 123 participants in the North and with the grants from OIF, the women are being empowered to support their families.
REAP (Responsive Evidence System for African Policy Needs) Project
This is an intervention is carried out by the South Africa Centre for Evidence NPC in collaboration with eBASE Africa and aims to develop and test a fully online platform for capacity support to evidence units in Africa.
Funding in process
The interest demonstrated by funders to continue funding parts of the project demonstrates the innovativeness of the approach and is promising for the project.
Government of Western Cape, SA: to support the government with storytelling approaches for their policies including SGBV policies.
World bank SWEDD: based on the partnerships developed by eBASE the World Bank is interested in funding our innovative interventions