St. Francis NGO partners with UN for Spotlight Initiative to tackle violence against women and girls

Dec 31, 2020 News

By Malisa Player-Harry

A section of the gathering at the launch of the Spotlight Initiative.

Tablets and phones to facilitate the initiative were handed out.

Kaieteur News – The St. Francis Community Developers led by Alex Foster has partnered with the United Nations and two of its partners – the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF) – to launch the Spotlight Initiative. The programme will focus primarily on violence against women and girls, particularly in vulnerable areas.
The Spotlight Initiative in Guyana seeks to address the root causes of violence against women and girls (VAWG) with an emphasis on prevention. It will introduce and expand on preventive measures, address legislative and policy gaps, improve institutional capacities, augment service delivery systems, especially in remote communities, enhance data collection and use, and build a stronger civil society response to ensure justice is delivered to women and girls experiencing multiple forms of discrimination and violence.
The project, which was implemented and supported to the tune of $10M, is set to kick off this week with two sites already identified, according to Alex Foster. One of the sites will be in the bottom flat of the St. Francis building in Port Mourant, Berbice and the other is set up at 25 Charles Place, New Amsterdam (NA), Berbice. The project is also divided into two phases, a pilot for NA (Education Department Road to Angoy’s Avenue) and for Port Mourant (Rose Hall and Port Mourant).
“The project is supported by two of the UN implementing partners, UNFPA and UNICEF (represented by Mr. Bynoe and by Ms. Nicola respectively), both supporting to the tune of $10M for the first four months of the project. St Francis will be working with the United Bricklayers and for UNICEF, we will be involved in behavioural change activities and a number of prevention strategies to be achieved through outreach and collaboration with several partners across the region and further afield,” he stated at a simple launching ceremony attended by key persons in the society.
Foster stated that the behavioural change activities would be implemented during the same time that the support services coming from the UNFPA aspect of the project will be implemented. UNICEF will be funding the behavioural change aspect of the project, which is mostly the field aspect.
“There are behavioural change officers that will be visiting New Amsterdam and will be visiting Rose Hall and Port Mourant as they collect information and try to influence behavioural change at all levels with government partners, religious institutions, sports clubs, youth clubs, individual’s family and the direct persons who are affected by gender-based violence. We also will be providing full-time counselling at NA, so very shortly, as soon as this week, we will access funds and install at Bricklayers the services of a landline for internet and likewise here at St. Francis.”
Foster mentioned too that the first four months of the project would run from December 2020 to March 2021, but in January “an aggressive marketing strategy will begin” with monthly programmes to address various components of the project and efforts to advocate for support from the public. Training will also be done, he said, for staff “so that they can be able to respond to the public, the beneficiaries of the programme.”
Those persons who have been recruited to be a part of the programme were presented with Samsung Tablets and Samsung A21s cellular phones to assist them in carrying out the mandate of the programme.
The initiative comes at a time when there is a daunting number of reported violent acts committed against women and girls, predominantly by their partners. Just a few days ago, a woman was murdered in a most brutal way by her partner; he also killed her 11-year-old daughter.