CONCEPT SUMMARY NINE (9):
The Reporting Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Project

(A Media Strategy for combating GBV while promoting the rights of children as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC])

PROJECT SUMMARY AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES

Overall Goal

Increasing Technical and Professional Capacity of Female Journalists in Reporting Gender-Based Violence (GBV) from Cultural Perspective: (A Media Strategy for combating GBV while promoting the rights of children as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC])

Specific Objectives and Expected Results

i. To increase technical and professional capacity of female journalists in reporting Gender-based violence and other gender–based injustices from cultural perspective
ii. To uncover the negative cultural traditions that promote GBV that affect the rights of children as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC)
iii. To propose practical solutions to the problems identified.
iv. To enable CRIDOC staff/volunteers and the entire media in Malawi understand GBV from the communities’ perspective so as to be able to effectively organize media activities to mitigate the practices.
v. To document community and institutional knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding what constitutes gender-based violence, causes and how these attitudes differ between women and men, various age groups.
vi. To give different stakeholders (including policy makers) a platform to brainstorm over, and re-examine, the cases of GBV that took place during the period under review that could have as well been forgotten.
vii. To explore other positive cultural traditions and/or values that can be used to promote an environment that is hostile to GBV

Project Description

This project fallas under the "Training, Capacity Building and Networking" core thematic programme of CRIDOC. The project is in line with CRIDOC workplace gender policy. The policy is committed to promoting gender equality and views this as a universal principle. It reflects the views of its members and staff and is in line with the fundamental principles enshrined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

This proposal also responds to the aims of the organisation’s Strategic Plan 2005-2010 in initiating a project that aims at advocating messages of gender-based violence (GBV), its causes and negative contribution to the socio-economic development of the country, and how the different cultural traditions have been affecting socio-development either positively or negatively. Special focus will be to assess to what extent have the rights of children (especially the girl-child) been affected by GBV from the cultural perspective.

Thus the project will critically highlight and re-examine the long entrenched positive and negative cultural traditions, seeking to promote only the positive ones and “decampaign” the negative ones.

The project will deliberately target female journalists who will be trained in video documentary production as well as feature writing. This is in line of the previous research reports and initiatives that show that female journalists were both under-represented in the media as well as disenfranchised. One of such research reports is the Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) conducted in September 2002 by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), in collaboration with its partner, Gender Links, in 12 SADC countries whose findings were published in March 2003. This has been the most comprehensive study ever undertaken in the whole world to date.

The other probably similar initiative may include the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launch of the "Women Make the News" initiative on 3 March 2006 in Paris, a campaign that called on the media worldwide to hand over editorial responsibility to women; to celebrate the professional achievements of women journalists; and to promote equal professional chances and equal access to decision-making positions for both men and women in media newsrooms.

After training, mobilising and deploying the journalists into communities to write and document the issues into video documentary and book anthology, the messages will later be disseminated through a series of public debates which will be conducted on the basis of case studies (media analysis) on the selected GBV cases that took place within a defined timeframe in all the three regions of Malawi, while at the same time promoting the positive cultural values. The case studies shall be recorded on a video documentary as well as a book (anthology) in both English and two vernacular languages. The whole project shall run for nine months, and the proposed action has been divided into two main phases as follows:

(i) First Phase

 Library Research:
 Training:
 Information Gathering:
 Video and Book Production
 Critique

(ii) Second Phase (Advocacy Phase)

 Official launch of the documentary and book
 Distribution of both the documentary and book to various strategic stakeholders, including communities
 A series of community filming events of the video documentary with public debates involving different stakeholders and communities.
 Filming of the video documentary (in a series of episodes) on the national television station
 A series of panel discussions on all the case studies featured in the book on both the radio and the national television station

NOTE:
CRIDOC will respond within 48 hours upon receiving your request/query only after fully including the following information in your request/querry:

(a) Your Name

(b) Your Organisation

(c) Your Contact Details (address, phone, e-mail, etc)

(d) Explain why you require more information

(e) What will you use information for?

(f) Explain why you require full proposal?

(g) What will you use the proposal for?

(h) Any more comments?

NB: CRIDOC reserves the right to provide more information/full proposal based largely on the answers to the questions stated above. Whether such information/proposal has been granted or not, either way we pledge to respond to your request/querry within 48 after accessing the e-mail.