The Sunday News
Rumbidzai Mhlanga, Sunday Life Reporter
AS a way of preventing gender-based violence, the Hope for a Child in Christ (HOCIC) organisation in partnership with United Nations Women has come up with programmes that will influence change in African communities.
HOCIC is a non-governmental organisation, which was established in 1995. The organisation is guided by its strategic plan which has five thematic areas among them, food security and livelihoods; women economic empowerment, psycho-social support, education and life skills and public health.
Under the women economic empowerment thematic area, HOCIC in partnership with UN Women is implementing Start Awareness, Support and Action (SASA) programme.
The monitoring and evaluations officer Heather Dube told this publication about programmes the organisation focuses on.
“We have a number of programmes and activities we do that help communities fight against violence for women and the girl child as well as demystify myths about being patriarchal, gender dynamics and power imbalance in societies.
“As an organisation we realised that the root cause for some causes of gender imbalance is because women in the African society are taught from an early age to be submissive, hence men take advantage of that.
“By virtue these cases are mostly perpetuated by cultural beliefs. We sensitised religious leaders and village leaders to make it easy to bring change in the villages,” Miss Dube said.
“The Awareness Phase focuses on deepening analysis of men’s power over women and the effect it has on women when the community does not take any action against gender-based violence.
“Support and Action programme is mainly concerned with the Know, Feel and Do concepts which articulates that when community members know about the violence against women and girls; how do they feel and what do they do about it.”
She said since they started their programmes there are positive changes in most of the communities they have worked with.
“We have implemented our programmes in two wards of Matobo district in Matabeleland South Province and we appreciate the willingness to learn that has been exhibited.
“We conducted 16 days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence commemoration in the form of a Music Gala where partners and community activists shared knowledge about ways of preventing and tackling issues of violence.
