We Can Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls
We all have power. Beyond Borders’ community-based initiative, Rethinking Power, asks people, ‘How are you using your power?’ By organizing the entire community to ask this question, we begin to address the root cause of violence against women and girls – the power imbalance between women and men.
Rethinking Power has expanded its reach to 84 communities in Haiti using this approach – proven by researchers at the Global Women’s Institute at The George Washington University to cut intimate partner violence by more than half, community-wide.
Women and men are sharing in the decision-making in their households now and parents are listening to the voices of their girls equally with their boys. Men don’t keep money from women like they did before. People are learning that balancing power in a family makes that family stronger and leads to better choices. ~ Community Activist
Find Your Voice
Rethinking Power is designed around the fundamental belief that everyone has a role to play in preventing violence against women and girls and balancing power between women and men.
We’re engaging people from all walks of life, inviting them to examine the power relationships in their day-to-day lives and to become activists in the various roles they play as market women, motorcycle-taxi drivers, students, pastors, journalists, health care workers, and many more.
So, how are you using your power?
Vibrant Activism Everywhere!
We’re using three approaches to empower women and men and girls and boys everywhere to become activists in the movement to prevent violence and balance power: SASA! Together, Power To Girls, and Safe and Capable.
SASA! Together is a ground-breaking, evidence-based approach by Raising Voices that mobilizes communities to prevent domestic violence. Engaging all actors in the community — women, men, cultural and religious leaders, local officials, police, health-care providers — SASA! Together fosters critical reflection on gender and power and inspires local-level activism.
Adapted partly from SASA! Together and partly created by Beyond Borders’ Rethinking Power Team, Power To Girls focuses community mobilization on prevention of violence against girls. Power To Girls includes guidance on creating and supporting girls’ groups, a set of community organizing tools designed to create deep and lasting change among adults, and a school-wide process of change that includes sample lesson plans for social science, biology and language teachers.
Also created by the Rethinking Power Team, Safe and Capable is designed to change how communities see women and girls with disabilities and to increase activism of women and girls with disabilities and their communities to prevent violence. Created with funding from the UN Trust Fund/UN Women, the program is being integrated in communities alongside our SASA! Together and Power To Girls programming. Safe and Capable includes a five-part introductory guide, training curriculum, theater plays, dialogue-based posters, “quick chat” sessions, and learning and evaluation guides.
What You Can Do
You can make a gift to expand the work to prevent violence against women and girls.
Your gift leverages the power of local activists who are organizing communities to take on the root cause of violence against women and girls – the imbalance in power between women and men.
And, each of us can examine the power relationships in our own lives and ask ourselves: how am I using my power?
The Results Are In
Read the summary results — available in English and Creole — of an evaluation of our work by the Global Women’s Institute at The George Washington University. For more information about the research or full versions of the reports, contact us at rethinkingpower@beyondborders.
English
Haitian Creole
