Page 76 - SCAT Rural Voice II - 35 Stories for 35 Years

Gender
are raped at night by both ordinary men and politicians. The law fails women because the men are arrested for a week or two and are then seen back in the community with no sentence. Young girls are bribed by wealthy men and politicians to perform sexual activities with them. These men take the young girls out during weekends and weekdays when they are supposed to focus on their studies. As a result, we experience high rates of teenage pregnancy and school dropouts. Many women are suffering from trauma and that makes them feel scared to claim their rights. Our organisation is dealing with this trauma through offering counselling services. Women are encouraged to stand up for their rights. That empowerment makes women gain confidence that earns respect.
Advocacy is the most essential tool to share information with abused women. We ensure that women in our community know their rights as no one is born to be abused whether they are educated or illiterate, poor or rich. We also empower victims of abuse to speak out about their rights and women’s issues, supporting each other with dignity and respect. This is all done through talks where most women gather. This includes dialogues, workshops and awareness campaigns with the community at large. We also use information from the Independent electoral Commission (IeC) like Gender-Based Violence, Human rights, Stigma and discrimination and Labour Issues.
As we are the only organisation in our area, we make sure that all women are being served in a professional manner. Because we do not have all the services for abused women, we refer them to our relevant stakeholders for those services we do not offer. When in need of health services when women are critically abused, we refer them to clinics, organise ambulances for them to hospital and accompany them there to ensure that they are attended to. We visit them in hospital when admitted and refer them to hospital social workers for trauma debriefing. We also refer them to the police when the client is harassed by the perpetrator for laying a charge against him. Severely abused women are also referred to the police for protection orders. We also help abused women, whose children are affected, by accompanying them to schools to explain the situation at home. Married women living with abuse are also referred to FAMSA in Grahamstown.
CAre Alicedale designs mechanisms to help break the bondage of abuse and dependency syndrome. Our organisation empowers women to take a lead on women’s issues. We support women’s leadership so that any reason for the weakening of the women’s movement can be monitored and prevented. We also work with women through a range of capacity-building efforts, to ensure that they can participate in decision-making processes. We promote women’s access to the law and winning court cases aimed at protecting women. Our organisation also supports initiatives aimed at providing greater legal support and knowledge of the law. It has been discovered that legal processes are often long and require significant resources and training, making them inaccessible for most women who need them.
We have set up support groups for information sharing and empathy so that women are able to talk in a safe space about their pain and trauma and gain strength from others who have similar experiences. We group the support groups according to shared social and emotional challenges. Capacity and empowerment topics and future goals relevant to the groups are discussed to channel the right way of executing or implementing such ideas. They make use of our center which is a safe and secure space for their meetings which are facilitated by coordinators, fieldworkers and a social worker.
All of us at CAre Alicedale strive to live up to the promise we made when we started. We are a community who are attempting to reach empowerment. I do this work and we do this work because we care deeply about our people.
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RuRal Voice ii: 35 stories for 35 years