Do you want to take a whole-of-community approach?

Mobilise communities to end VAWG

Community mobilisation efforts focus on engaging and empowering local communities to actively participate in transforming harmful social norms, attitudes and beliefs which drive violence against women and girls (VAWG). These approaches try to engage a critical mass of people across a community in an effort to foster whole-of-community change. They often focus on raising awareness of women’s rights, holding powerholders to account, and building collective action among community members, activists, leaders and service providers to challenge and transform the underlying causes of violence against women and girls (VAWG). They typically engage volunteer ‘community activists’ or ‘community change makers’ who are trained and supported to conduct a range of activities with community members where they live and work. Programmes can maximise the impact of community mobilisation by ensuring sufficient timeframes (3-5 years) and intensity of programming, training and mentoring, carefully selected community activists, developing context-appropriate activities, engaging a range of relevant stakeholders, and establishing safe spaces for dialogue and reflection.

Guiding Principles

Survivor-Centred Approach

Doing No Harm

Intersectionality & Leaving No One Behind

Spotlight Initiative

Approach and Learning

Adapting the SASA! Community mobilisation approach: Spotlight Initiative has adapted and implemented the SASA! Approach in Uganda and Haiti, originally developed by the Ugandan women’s rights organisation Raising Voices. SASA! is rooted in a feminist understanding of men’s power over women as a root cause of VAWG and works to balance power in relationships and communities. It trains and supports community activists to facilitate informal activities - such as dialogues, role plays, discussions of posters - with community members in their homes, workplaces, places of worship, and areas of significance within the community. It aims to build a critical mass of support for changes in attitudes, behaviours and norms by emphasising the benefits of non-violence using multiple reinforcing strategies at inter-personal, community and institutional levels to reach community members. See case study on Uganda below

Using an ‘ambassador model’ whereby community ambassadors are identified and trained to facilitate community dialogues. For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, Spotlight Initiative’s Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Programme (CHAMP) trained around 25 community leaders as ambassadors, who facilitated dialogues with more than 200 young people and caregivers. See case study below.

Developing community-based teams to ‘interrupt’ instances of VAWG. For example, in Honduras, Spotlight Initiative supported the development of rapid response teams of “Violence Interrupters” in areas with high prevalence of gang wars and trafficking networks. Within the first six months of implementation the programme interrupted 662 instances of violence and safeguarded the lives of an estimated 133 women. See case study below.

Taking a whole-of-school approach to challenge harmful norms: This approach takes into account the interconnectedness of schools, communities, and families in order to improve the school environment for students, staff, and community members. Working with schools and educational institutions can be an effective way to prevent violence in the short and longer term. Effective programming starts from child-centred, gender-transformative approaches which integrate Do No Harm principles, recognising that students, teachers, non-teaching staff and parents can all be perpetrators, victims or witnesses of violence. Whole-of-school approaches seek to address discipline, peer violence, bullying, harassment, comprehensive sexuality education, mental health and safe school journeys. They often build on existing structures such as parent-teacher associations and school management committees to drive change.

Sources: Spotlight Initiative (2023) Spotlight Initiative Compendium of Innovative and Good Practices and Lessons Learned

Top Tips

How to develop community mobilisation initiatives - top tips from the wider VAWG sector.

Click a tip for more information.

Work across multiple levels using a range of strategies

Carefully plan and phase activity and messaging

Ensure longer-term flexible funding cycles

Carefully select, train and mentor community activists

Develop context-appropriate activities to transform social norms

Engage a range of relevant stakeholders

Establish safe spaces for critical dialogue

View Sources

Case Studies

Community Mobilisation in Trinidad and Tobago

Spotlight Initiative

Spotlight Initiative worked with UNFPA and the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago (FPATT) to implement the Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Programme (CHAMP). This supported young people and adult caregivers across three regions of Trinidad and Tobago to address HIV prevention and challenge norms around peer pressure and early adolescent sexual activity.

Spotlight Initiative trained around 25 community leaders as ambassadors to facilitate dialogues across different levels of the community. Over 200 young people and caregivers participated in these dialogues. The focus of the discussion was around improving knowledge and understanding across whole families and included discussions on puberty, family violence, HIV prevention, sexuality, health risks, and peer pressure. The programme worked with communities and families to encourage protective relationships between adult caregivers and the children/youth in their care. Spotlight Initiative held workshops, which sought to strengthen the skills and ability of participants to identify family-level risks, parental monitoring, discipline, conflict resolution, comfort in discussing sensitive topics, and problem-solving abilities, especially related to sexual peer pressure. This led to caregivers feeling more capable of talking to the children and youth in their care about ways to prevent GBV. These efforts were consistently linked up to referral pathways and essential services, ensuring those in need could access the support they required.

Source: Spotlight Initiative Compendium

Region: Caribbean

Stakeholders: Community leaders, Health Sector, Men and boys, Women and Girls

Using the SASA! Together methodology in Uganda

Spotlight Initiative

In Uganda, Spotlight Initiative has supported the SASA! Together – a community mobilisation approach that supports communities to create positive and sustainable changes in the norms that perpetuate violence against women and girls. SASA! Together is a revised version of the original SASA! Approach, developed by the Ugandan NGO Raising Voices. New features of SASA! Together include a distinct focus on intimate partner violence, strategies that reach across the whole community, and more support for organisations and communities to sustain change.

The SASA! Together methodology focuses on addressing power imbalances between genders and inspired communities to start rethinking and reshaping harmful social norms. In 2025, through SASA! Together, Spotlight Initiative reached 35,684 people in Uganda. These efforts mark a pivotal step towards shifting social norms towards more balanced relationships and healthier, safer communities.

“I learned about the different forms of power and … I learned to use the power within since I have helped many families by supporting them to access services.” - Chantal Mukeshimana, refugee community activist.

Spotlight Initiative has also supported the rollout of SASA! Together in refugee contexts, where community workers have helped support communities in the process of changing social norms, as well as identifying and referring cases of violence to different service providers.

Region: Africa

Stakeholders: Activists, Community leaders, Men and boys, Service providers, Women and Girls, Women’s Rights Organisations

The Cure Violence model in Honduras

Spotlight Initiative

In Honduras, Spotlight Initiative implemented the Cure Violence model in areas of high prevalence of gang wars and trafficking networks. 'Violence interrupters' guided discussions, identified risk factors, and used a collective rapid prevention technique to avert 1,770 violent incidents. Key lessons from the Cure Violence model included:

The value of a multifaceted methodology. The Cure Violence model is based on WHO’s approach to reversing the spread of infectious diseases. It has three strategies - 1) detect and interrupt potentially violent conflicts; 2) identify and treat those at high risk (ensure access to services, drug treatment, job training); 3) and mobilise communities to shift norms. The methodology involved community dialogues and youth engagement. It also included rapid response techniques, watchdog groups and data to track reductions of crime rates.
Credible, local outreach workers play a key role. The Cure Violence model has been evaluated, and key findings suggest the important of outreach workers having shared backgrounds or coming from the same neighbourhood as the target groups - in this case it was those who are most at risk of violence, because they already had a degree of trust within the community.

Learn more and read the Spotlight Initiative Honduras Final Report.

Region: Latin America

Stakeholders: Men and boys, Youth

Keeping Girls in School in Malawi

Spotlight Initiative

In Malawi, 38% of girls and 7% of boys marry before the age of 18. Spotlight Initiative in Malawi recognised that schools alone could not solve this problem, but identified them as a one stakeholder in prevention and response.

Spotlight Initiative was designed to be deliberately multi-layered. Its Safe Schools intervention taught adolescents how to detect and report sexual and gender-based violence and harmful practices. At the same time, its One School, One Police Officer Initiative embedded the Malawi Police Service directly into schools and community structures, facilitating investigations and prosecutions of child marriage and GBV cases. Together, these activities led to over 601,504 learners (306,490 girls and 295,018 boys) being trained across the 6 districts, to detect and use reporting mechanisms. 52 survivors reported violence to the police through school complaints boxes placed in 135 schools as part of the programme. Through this, 37 survivors accessed justice through mobile courts convened under the Safe Schools intervention. More than 620 girl survivors of violence received scholarships to help them complete school.

Traditional leaders also played a key role in prevention. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 1,500 chiefs were trained to become champions of change, improving their capacity to respond to VAWG. Traditional leaders collectively annulled over 1,500 child marriages by the end of the programme. According to Spotlight Initiative's Sustainability Report (2025), even two years after the programme in Malawi closed, many of these traditional leaders have continued to act as agents of change, applying VAWG by-laws and refering incidents of GBV onwards to the police.

The lesson from Malawi is that keeping girls in school and ending violence requires working closely with multiple community institutions, including schools, police departments and traditional leaders to deliver lasting impacts.

Read the Spotlight Initiative Malawi Final Report.