Page 6 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

“We won’t be able to finish this elephant that is killing our women and children if you are working all alone, by yourself ... we need everyone to be on board to restore back the dignity in our communities.”2
BACKGROUND
The Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) commissioned this study to explore the strategies of local development agency (LDA) partners in tackling gender inequality and gender-based violence (GBV) in rural communities. Building on previous research, the study aims to identify and understand the strategic approaches of local LDAs in dealing with the multiple manifestations and impacts of gender-based violence (GBV) in the rural areas where they are located.3 The study’s primary purpose is to inform SCAT’s future grantmaking and programmatic activities that address gender inequality and GBV. The secondary purpose is to serve as a practical and strategic resource in support of the gender work of LDAs, and other organisations and donors working in this field.
In 2019, SCAT commissioned the Centre for Law and Society (CLS)4 to undertake research on the responses and perceptions of LDAs to GBV in the rural and peri- urban communities where they work. That research investigated how these organisations network to create a local response, how they raise awareness about the problem of GBV, and what dynamics and obstacles they face in implementing their objectives. Informed by the SCAT/CLS findings, the present study seeks to focus further on the strategic avenues – and the contextual dynamics and conceptual thinking underpinning these approaches – that LDAs pursue in their gender work and in navigating barriers to it. Given this discreet focus, it does not provide a detailed description of the contexts in which LDAs operate, nor of their vast and varied scopes of work. Such descriptions are well documented in the SCAT/CLS
Emma Goliath coordinator of Witzenberg Rural Development Centre facilitating a workshop.
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“Finish this Elephant”: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV
2. 3.
4.
Misiwe Ngqondela, CBO stakeholder.
Local development agencies (LDAs) are locally-based community organisations, run by the community for the community. They play some or all of the following roles: 1) provide paralegal services; 2) analyse data from case statistics to inform their strategies and mobilise communities to achieve their socio-economic rights; 3) build stakeholder relationships with police, health services, welfare services, and other CBOs and NGOs, to improve service delivery in areas of specific concern for their community; 4) run awareness and mobilisation campaigns focused on social justice issues; and 5) advocate for systemic change, working in partnership with other NGOs in the social justice sector. These community-based organisations are supported by SCAT, through core grant funding, mentorship and capacity development.
See Karimakwenda, N., Moult, K., Jefthas, D. & Teele, T. 2019. Striving for Change from Within: A Study of Rural Community-Based Organisations’ Engagement with Gender-Based Violence. Cape Town: Social Change Assistance Trust & Centre for Law & Society.