The Spotlight Initiative in Jamaica is helping to transform society so that women and girls can live free from family violence. It aims to address the normalization of violence in Jamaica and have society see family violence as public issue. The Initiative focuses its interventions on four parishes exposed to high levels of violence, while legislation and policy work reaches a national population. While the Initiative takes a women- and girls-centred approach, with a particular focus on those who are most vulnerable, important efforts are made to engage men and boys and address toxic masculinity that is deeply embedded in society.
Total cost: $10,929,600| Direct beneficiaries: 640,965 | Indirect beneficiaries: 2,723,667
Innovations
Survivor-driven Actions
Community mobilization by survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and family violence are utilized to underscore the lifetime impact of abuse and VAWG, and the critical importance of changing harmful gender norms and ensuring the safety of women and girls in families.
Use of Technology
Spaces and platforms are created to promote deliberate sharing and learning through inclusive strategic coordination mechanisms, as well as peer learning to promote innovators. This includes the engagement of adolescents and young people by using social media and U-Report (a social messaging platform) to enable them to participate in the Spotlight Initiative programmes by expressing their opinions, and sharing experiences and concerns around family violence.
Use of Visual Arts, Music, Stories, Theatre and Photography
Visual arts, Jamaican popular music, storytelling, theatre and photography are used to convey messages that promote positive parenting, gender-equality and respect among girls, boys, men and women. The content of this messaging is geared primarily toward addressing the root causes of family violence and the promotion of positive gender norms and gender equality.
Improving Access to Services
This includes: 1) strengthening existing reporting, referral and case management mechanisms and tools that link survivors to service providers along the continuum of care, ensuring that rural communities and non-traditional groups are not excluded; 2) the creation of model(s) of integration, coordination and communication among national and subnational institutions for enhanced capacity, prevention and delivery of services and 3) assessing and using alternative forms of justice other than the criminal justice system to enhance access to justice, especially in cases of family violence.
Shared Operations
Maximization of cost (cost savings) are achieved as a result of the efficiencies gained through collaboration with all duty bearers and by piggybacking on existing programmes that focus on similar objectives.
The Spotlight Initiative also benefits from a centralized Knowledge Management System that operates like a Project Management Office (PMO), which supports and coordinates common operations, and ensurse that synergies are made with other ongoing initiatives such as the NSAP-GBV and the National Plan of Action for integrated response to children and violence.
UN agencies
UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNDP
National Focal Point: Maxsalia Salmon, maxsalia.salmon@one.un.org
National Reference Group
List of members
