Upscaling End to GBV Edutainment Project FACE Initiative is a grassroots organization that stands out for its good communication and interaction with target communities in the heart of the Niger Delta (including Bayelsa State, Delta State, Rivers State, and Akwa-Ibom State). FACE has many yearsof experience working with volatile communities at the forefront of oil and gas production -including especially women and youth whose voicestend to be marginalized in the public arena.

This project idea stems from the findings and outcome of FACE Initiative engagement with schools and communities while implementing the #Collectively Reducing Impunity in Education (CRIE)# and WATCH UNSCR 1325 projects in the following communities- Ogbia, Sagbama and Yenagoa Local Government Areas of Bayelsa State; onthe causes and effects of gender based violence, and to develop preventive and response strategies to violence against women and girls, linking communities to caregivers to achieve gender justice etc.

Although CSOs are making efforts in assisting women and girls to take their rightful place in the sphere of decision making; and connecting them to caregivers when they are violated, this is often times truncated by lack of awareness on the part of the target beneficiaries, socio-cultural norms that perpetually undermine women#s rights, prejudice over actions, and lack of capacity to proactively connect to relevant CSOs for support. Some of the specific challenges identified in addressing GBV includes: inadequate responses , poverty, inadequate representation and participation of women in leadership and decision making, lack of peace and insecurity.

This project will build on the successes of the CRIE project by up scaling gender awareness and capacities of women and girls beyond the school environment to the wider community to enable them identify and respond to gender based violence and promote increased women leadership role and influential participation in community decision making process.

The project aims to end violence against women and girls by building capacities of women and community leaders to proactively respond toVAWG in their communities. The project will draw collaboration from different stakeholder groups in communities (chiefs, women, men, religious leaders, opinion leaders), security agents, legal services, medical and psychosocial caregivers and CSOs to develop strategies to respond to cultural norms that perpetrate violence against women and girls and collectively advocate for a change in both cultural and institutional practices that undermine the right of women and girls.

Expected Outcomes of the project are:
-Increase the number of women demanding gender justice and communities with effective strategies in responding to violence against women and girls
-Greater number of citizens particularly in the eight project communities, raising their voices to challenge social norms that perpetuate VAWG
-Significant awareness and consensus built among communities and decision-makers about the role of social norms in perpetuating VAWG.
-State level policy and practice reforms targeting negative social norms to address cultural and institutional violence against women and girls
-Government endorses policy recommendations that reduces impunity that encourages the perpetration of VAWG

The project will reinforce the successes of the CRIE project, leverage on the collaboration of the CRIE project stakeholders toadapt strategies to upscale the impact of the project by widening the safe space of women and girls in communities, sensitizing thepublic on violence against women and strengthen women#s capacity to take leadership positions in their communities to promote gender justice. This objective will be achieved through inter-related activities such as sensitization, trainings, institutionalization of community groups and advocacy.

The project is worth Fifty Thousand Euro (Euro 50, 000 )