Prior to selecting or designing a prevention strategy, it is important to conduct a thorough assessment of the local context so interventions can be tailored as needed. This analysis should involve stakeholders including civil society organisations, women and girls' rights activists, local researchers and government partners. More recommendations on how to understand drivers, types and dynamics are available here.

• The different forms and prevalence of VAWG, as well as their drivers and risk factors. What is the specific type(s) of VAWG you are seeking to prevent? How does this vary from other forms of violence? What are the key risk factors and drivers? Which programme approaches have proven effective in addressing or preventing these risk factors? 
• Existing or past programming, and learning:  What existing or previous programmes are there in this context, or globally, related to the specific type(s) of VAWG? What prevention strategies have worked to address the specific type of VAWG? Looking at previous examples, could these work within the context? 
• Resources and expertise: Does the organisation have the expertise and cultural knowledge to implement the prevention strategy? What capacity building, if any, would be needed? Is there time and budget available to design, adapt, implement and evaluate approaches? 
• Women and girls’ perspectives: What do women and girls see as the main risks and have they been consulted on the prevention strategy? What do they see as the biggest opportunities and challenges to preventing VAWG in their contexts? What is their past experience of trying to do so? What are their recommendations for dealing with specific communities, including backlash? 

When designing a prevention strategy, it’s helpful to consider the lessons learned from previous programming. This review of effective prevention design and implementation highlights ten elements which can contribute to impact:

Source: Jewkes et al. (2020). Evidence brief: Effective design and implementation elements in interventions to prevent violence against women and girls. What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls. P 4.  

In order to design a comprehensive and multi-component VAWG prevention strategy, it is important to build on best practice in programme design and implementation. Robust programme design ensures relevant stakeholders from a range of sectors come together and are meaningfully engaged from the earliest stages, including women’s movements and civil society groups already working on ending VAWG, and marginalised groups. Strong programme design also requires a mapping of existing EVAWG work and stakeholders, not only to avoid duplication of effort, but to grow support and strengthen resourcing for community-led and owned solutions which are already well-adapted and integrated into the context.

Comprehensive programme design entails: Ensuring survivor-centred programming efforts, reaching marginalised groups, setting up effective governance mechanisms, ensuring adequate resourcing and investment for programming, and building effective partnerships. It is also important to review lessons learned from prior VAWG design and implementation to inform the planning process for implementing prevention work, including how to scale EVAWG programmes and improve programme sustainability. 

Evidence shows that VAWG is preventable. The core drivers of VAWG are socially determined, which means they can change. Some prevention strategies and interventions have achieved substantial reduction in levels of violence, even after only a few years of implementation. Prevention work should therefore be informed by the evidence available locally, regionally and globally. For example, the UN's RESPECT framework outlines strategies that have shown promise in reducing the prevalence of one or more types of VAWG. An implementation package is available here. 

• Strategy R: Strengthening relationship skills and promoting healthy relationships. This refers to strategies aimed at individuals or groups of women, men or couples to improve skills in interpersonal communication, conflict management and shared decision-making.
• Strategy E: Empowerment of women. This refers to economic and social empowerment including inheritance and asset ownership, microfinance plus gender and empowerment training interventions, collective action, creating safe spaces and mentoring to build skills in self-efficacy, assertiveness, negotiation, and self-confidence.
• Strategy S: Ensuring services, including police, legal, health, and social services provided to survivors.
• Strategy P: Reducing poverty including strategies targeted to women or the household, ranging from cash transfers, savings, microfinance loans, labour force interventions.
• Strategy E: Ensuring environments are made safe, such as safe schools, public spaces and work environments.
• Strategy C: Preventing child and adolescent abuse, refers to establishing nurturing family relationships, prohibiting corporal punishment, and implementing parenting programmes.
• Strategy T: Transforming attitudes, beliefs and social norms. This includes tstrategies that challenge harmful norms and stereotypes that uphold male privilege and female subordination, that justify VAWG that stigmatize survivors. 

These evidence reviews are useful sources to understand evidence based strategies:

Kerr-Wilson et al (2020) What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls: A rigorous evidence review of interventions to prevent violence against women and girls. 

Prevention Collaborative (2021). Brief 3: Evidence-based programmes to prevent violence against women. Prevention Essentials.

When considering the application of a successful prevention approach or model from another context, it's important to tailor that programme to the specific setting and target population(s), and within the context of existing prevention work. This adaptation process involves modifying the design or implementation of the approach to fit the context, while ensuring key elements that contributed to its success are retained. Investing resources in this process is crucial to avoid the risks associated with ineffective interventions and potential harm. Engaging with the original programme creator or designer can help maintain the integrity of the original programme while tailoring it effectively to your context. Read more about adapting a programme to context.

When prevention programmes are implemented in communities and institutions, people become more aware of the harmful nature of VAWG and women and girls are often more likely to want to report violence, seek help and services. It is therefore important that programme teams map existing response services and ensure that there are referral mechanisms in place to support survivors to access the services they need and want. This is sometimes called working across the prevention-to-response continuum.