ICPRD

Youth Forums Against Gender Based Violence

A Growing Movement of Male Youth in Combating Gender Based Violence and Other Women’s Rights Issues

The ICPRD/WWF partnership under the project has been able to develop a new model for short and long term solutions to reduce GBV and enhance women’s rights and development This model has been able to demonstrate that when loans are backed with sound commitment by supporting the Anti-Gender Based Violence activities in villages –overall women’s rights and productivity are enhanced.

ICPRD youth forums focus on violence issues, highlighting women’s rights to fight against atrocities and at the same time promoting loaning through WWF as a long term solution for self-employment and income-generating activities for women.

“Support against GBV” to members with alcoholic husbands or to girls against eve teasing (to prevent drop-outs) and mass awareness campaigns promoting “micro-credit/enterprise” through street theatre has produced “the GBV intervention product.” This is the add-on product, that women feel in the longer term a micro-credit/enterprise leads to lesser harassment for women. Higher networking between women and SHG groups protected by sons/nephews/neighbours from ICPRD’s youth forums has become a very low cost, people-oriented easily-capacity built solutions.

The case study of Bellary District of Karnataka is given below as a successful
example of this model:

In Bellary district the WWF(I) enrollment membership through ICPRD project intervention, has seen new WWF membership emerge (500 new members of which 200 are new loanees) in areas like

Sangankal	Lakshmi Narayan, ICPRD master trainer in charge

Moka	Gavi Sidda, ICPRD master trainer in charge

D. Nagenahalli	Shivrajkumar ICPRD master trainer in charge

Kamlapur	Veeresh, ICPRD master trainer in charge

Sangankal is 6 kms from Bellary town. 100 new members joined WWF as a result of project efforts. One community organizer ie Sumangalamma has joined WWF from this area. The training programmes and loaning is ongoing.

Moka is 15-20 km from Bellary town. 45 members from this area joined WWF. The training programmes and loaning is ongoing.

D. Nagenahalli is 30 kms from Bellary town. There are 50 women who are newly trained and loaning process is going on. The women joined during the time of formation of youth forums introduced by master trainers. The training programmes and loaning is ongoing.

Kamplapur is 70 kms from Bellary town. There are 55 new WWF enrolled members in Bellary. During the ICPRD mass campaign they had occasion to interact with WWF staff and community organizers and expressed their willingness to enroll their membership. The training programmes and loaning is ongoing.

The following factors ensured follow-up and sustainability of the project after the 7-month funding period:

Participatory methodology which leads to community-ownership, creation of enabling environment, support from the community, facilitate healthy exploration of the subject, promote informed debate and made it easier for young people to internalize the issue at a personal level.
Involvement of local NGOs, both formal and informal, for young people and women’s groups (WWF).
Training of Trainers facilitated development of a detailed strategy and plan for sustaining activities beyond the programme period.
Active involvement of the community, local agencies, youth organizations (WWF) at all levels of programme development and implementation ensured that the programme outcomes are ‘owned’ by the community.
The outcomes of the project formed an important part of the pro-poor and pro-gender advocacy of ICPRD, which covers about 900 NGOs in 21 states. This broadened the platform for dissemination and also in undertaking similar interventions with the partner NGOs in other states with poor female development indices (Bihar, Orissa, M.P. Jharkhand, Chattisgarh etc.)

Working Women’s Forum (WWF) is a premier national level organization with the expertise of developing and managing large community grassroots micro-finance interventions. WWF is working towards economic empowerment of poor women by organizing them into self-help groups. The core competence of the organization is its community-focused approach, which involves community mobilization and their involvement at all levels therefore the programmes are sustainable. WWF has a strong field base in the southern states (Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) and the present outreach is 7,00,000 persons spread across these states. WWF outreach in ICPRD project supported the organization of youth who were either in WWF credit group members’ communities or through organizers in identified districts of Karnataka.