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In Guyana, private sector companies are being encouraged and supported by Spotlight Initiative to use the Women’s Empowerment Principles. The first steps in the process included mapping private sector companies, NGOs, and governments that could benefit from the WEPs. Next, a series of webinars were held to increase awareness of the WEPs, which resulted in 18 organisations expressing interest in joining the programme and developing gender action plans and gender gap analysis tools. Currently, there are 1,600 signatories in the Latin American and Caribbean region. It was learned that additional…
In Mexico, domestic violence related calls to 911 sharply increased by 46% in the first few months of 2020 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was significant demand for shelters and not enough rooms available. To respond to this, the Spotlight Initiative programme, the national government, local governments and a hotel corporation built a multi-stakeholder partnership to provide free accommodation in hotels for women experiencing violence as an interim strategy. This was a complex partnership due to the diversity of actors from the public and private sector. To address this, a…
In Nigeria, Spotlight programme has implemented the STEAM Flagship for Women and Girls, an integrated approach and good practice for developing life skills through “21st century entrepreneurship training” for women and girl survivors of violence, including those who have suffered harmful practices. STEAM stands for SRHR information; Technology skills for sales and marketing; Ending VAWG and harmful practices information; Accounting and business management skills; Manufacturing and start-up support. Women and girls in the programme received training as peer educators on sexual and reproductive…
In 2020, Spotlight Initiative supported a National Parenting Programme in Grenada with a campaign called “Step Up Your Parenting Game”. This campaign targeted men and women who were parents and guardians. The focus of the messaging was on improving parenting approaches for the benefits of their children. This campaign included a number of sub-messages including
“No matter who, no matter what, there is no excuse for abuse”
“Children need their fathers: they need love, support and encouragement”
“Feeling stressed? Check your B.E.T. (body, environment, thoughts)”
“Communicate with your…
In 2022, Spotlight Initiative in Trinidad and Tobago aimed to improve CSOs’ access to grants through a three-tiered approach of stakeholder consultations, capacity building, and adapting processes to be more context-relevant. The objective was to support resource mobilisation and increase institutional, operational and technical capacities for long-term and sustainable work on EVAWG.
The programme began by consulting a Civil Society National Reference Group to discuss feedback on Spotlight Initiative’s funding opportunities and requirements. CSOs provided feedback that the timeframe for…
Grantees of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women used core institutional funds for a variety of purposes which have contributed to the sustainability of WROs and CSOs, including:
Self-care and staff resilience: In Argentina, Fundación Andhes, an organisation that trains cis, trans and lesbian women to become legal advisors for survivors of violence, used its core funding to hire a psychologist to support staff responding to reports of violence. In Nigeria, the HACEY Health Initiative also engaged a therapist to support their staff. Staff in the HACEY Health Initiative reported…
During the design phase of the Spotlight Initiative Caribbean Regional Programme, it was noted that there was no formal network of CSOs and WROs working to end VAWG. To close this gap, all partners agreed that the region would benefit from establishing an umbrella regional network. To this end, the programme organised a CSO retreat that brought together representatives from ten Caribbean countries.
The inaugural Caribbean CSO retreat was facilitated by UN Women Multi-Country Office (MCO) - Caribbean. Held in Jamaica in August 2022, the week-long retreat provided an opportunity for 24 CSOs…