Preventing Violence Against  Women and Girls through Engaging Men through Accountable Practices (EMAP) in Rubkona and Aweil East counties, South Sudan The proposed project will provide gender based violence (GBV) prevention services in Rubkona County of Unity State and Aweil East county in Northern Bahr el Ghazal targeting an estimated population of 15,804 (7,170M, 8,634F) host community members, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees affected by conflict and crisis in South Sudan. The intervention is designed to support individual behavior change intervention created with conflict affected communities, which aims to reduce violence against women and girls by addressing its root causes. IRC will utilize Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP) intervention as a primary innovative prevention model for engaging men in transformative individual behavior change, informed by the input and realities of the women in their communities. Targeting Bentiu POC, Bentiu town, Ding Ding and Tong communities in Rubkona and Aweil East, this intervention will play an important role in helping to create peaceful and safe communities where women can realize their full potential through participation in decision making at the household and community levels. The IRC will recruit and train EMAP supervisors and facilitators from the targeted communities who will comprise both male and female. Working with the community facilitators will be key for the success of the project as they understand their community better and are aware of the prevailing challenges women and girls face. The EMAP supervisors and facilitators will be taken through comprehensive trainings prior to their engagement with the community to ensure that they fully understand the intervention, and also to support them address their personal biases, attitudes and perceptions towards women and girls. Community introductory meetings through the existing community leadership structures will be conducted following sensitization sessions with women and men across the communities. Key information on the EMAP approach and the modalities of the engagements will be emphasized to ensure that they are well informed as they voluntarily commit to join the groups. Initial women's dialogue sessions of 8 weeks will be led by female facilitators at the respective women and girls friendly spaces. These dialogue groups will provide avenues for additional opportunities for ongoing individual feedback from women which will inform the men group sessions. The men sessions will take 16 weeks where the participants will have weekly sessions with the facilitators and guided by the supervisors. Across the 5 proposed communities, the groups will be running concurrently to ensure more community members have opportunities to join the groups within their communities. The IRC will use standard EMAP tools that monitor progress towards outcomes and minimize potential harm done during implementation which will be administered throughout the project period. The tools will be significant in analyzing the success of the intervention, as reported by male participants, female community members, and lead facilitators. These tools will help in assessing the progress and overall outcomes of the intervention which will be documented and disseminated for future guidance on the EMAP interventions. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the IRC will adapt the use of local radios and megaphones to sensitive the community and introduce EMAP intervention to the respective communities. Furthermore, the IRC will take all the necessary measures to ensure that EMAP participants and facilitators are not risk of COVID-19 by reducing the number of participants from 20 participants to 10 participants per group, ensuring participants sit in distance of one meter apart, providing adequate hand washing facilities, encouraging participants to wear face mask throughout the discussions. The precaution measures will also be observed during the trainings for Trainers and intervention introduction to community leaders and women groups.