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In Uganda, following the delivery of capacity strengthening sessions with government stakeholders, host and refugee communities advocating for EVAWG and the safety of women, new commitments were made in Yumbe District, which had a high prevalence rate of teenage pregnancies. Local authorities advocated for police to adequately investigate and bring perpetrators of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) to justice. In Adjumani District, a GBV ordinance is being pushed for by district women councillors (women caucus) and has received support by the local chairperson.
Additionally, through ‘security…
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 Zimbabwe and Malawi, Spotlight Initiative programmes supported the development of sexual harassment policies at multiple levels.
In Zimbabwe, in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, the programme filled a critical gap by supporting companies to develop gender-based violence and sexual harassment policies through the creation of the Strategy for the Elimination of Sexual Harassment and Gender-based Violence in the Workplace in Zimbabwe 2021-2025. This was developed through a consultative process with feedback from diverse stakeholders including the government, trade unions…
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…
In 2021, Spotlight Initiative supported their CSO partner ALFELA to conduct a capacity assessment of the National Police of Timor-Leste (PNTL). This involved interviewing 102 police officers from various departments to understanding PNTL’s response to VAWG cases. The assessment found that 55% of officers were not familiar with the Timor-Leste's law against domestic violence, 45% were not clear on how to handle cases, and only 60% knew how to properly categorise cases. Following on from this assessment, ALFELA conducted a day-long roundtable discussion with officers from the national Vulnerable…
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…
The Spotlight Initiative Pacific Regional Programme aims to support a diverse range of smaller CSOs through the small grants funding mechanism. The small grants, ranging from USD 2,500 to USD 50,000, have a simplified application process, with fewer steps than other funding mechanisms. As part of the small grants funding mechanism, the Pacific Regional Programme also had a special call for partners working to advance the safety of people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI) and feminist climate justice as it relates to EVAWG.
To provide support to these newer…
To diversify the types of implementing partners selected, Spotlight Initiative in Malawi undertook several activities to address barriers to smaller grassroots organisations. The programme issued a joint call for expressions of interest and disseminated hard copies in local languages at the community level. The team worked closely with district authorities to share hard copies of the advert in their offices and allow organisations to submit hand-written applications through district offices, saving them postage costs. As a result of these targeted efforts to engage smaller CSOs, 95% of the 112…
For the Spotlight Initiative, planning for programme sustainability involves a collaborative effort among multiple stakeholders to outline key steps and conditions to move from where a programme currently stands, towards a locally and nationally/regionally owned vision for ending VAWG. In 2022, a plenary session was held during the Spotlight Initiative’s Global Learning Symposium to exchange promising approaches and lessons on fostering national ownership and sustaining gains of ending VAWG programme through multi-stakeholder engagement. Key lessons were captured by stakeholder type:
Natio…