Women and Girls for Change - 2020 extension South Sudan SUMMARY Since 2016 Plan has been implementing this project in 6 communities in South Sudan. Significant progress in minimising violence has been recorded for women and girls increasing their resilience and creating a more conducive environment for gender equality, female leadership and the promotion of female participation in conflict resolution and peace building processes. Despite the gains, the following risks remain:
•Harmful social norms and cultural practices including child marriage and other forms of gender based violence
•Drug abuse and alcoholism exacerbating child neglect and abuse
•Limited knowledge on rights, laws and policies on the protection of women and girls
•Limited economic and education opportunities, especially for women and girls
In 2020 Plan continues to address these risk and work on creating an environment where women and girls feel safe and enabled to act on opportunities and take their rights to play a significant role towards sustainable peace. As stated in the Netherlands National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security 2016-2019, we believe women and girls can be/are crucial actors to foster sustainable peace in South Sudan. 
As concluded in our gender sensitive context, actor and conflict analysis women and girls in South Sudan are however hampered to fully contribute to sustainable peace processes due to: 
•	High levels of insecurity, where women and girls are often victims of sexual and gender based violence; 
•	A non-conducive environment, where women and girls are often structurally discriminated against and deprived of their rights; 
•	Internalized harmful gender norms, impeding women and girls to have a voice in decision making fora.  
This leads to a vicious circle as SGBV and exclusion from decision making are highly interlinked:  when women feel insecure, they are less likely to participate in peacebuilding processes, which will in turn lead to unequal rights and security needs being not adequately addressed.  
In this prospect, a multi-sectoral and multi-level approach is required, which will lead to more resilient and better protected women and girls (Result area 1 of our Theory of Change), the existence of an enabling environment for the promotion of gender equality (Result area  2) and meaningful engagement of women and girls in peace and security-related processes (Result area 3). Pathway 1 :  Promotion of resilience and protection of women and girls . 
While efforts for prevention and reduction of sexual and gender based violence are necessary, none the-less mechanisms and services to support survivors are crucial for strengthening women’s and girls’ resilience and enabling their participation in decision making.  
Pathway 2 :  Promotion of gender equality. 
To create an enabling environment for structural change in social norms, various stakeholders needs to be involved: woman and girl leaders to promote gender equality, but also traditional community leaders, local authorities, religious leaders, teachers and other influential actors considered “gate keepers”: persons who influence the information available for others and therefore sets the dominant norms and standards to perceive the world.  Families and community members needs also to be part of the process to transform thinking on gender and mainstream gender equality.    
Pathway 3 :  Promotion of meaningful engagement of women and girls in local decision making related to conflict prevention and resolution and peacebuilding. 
For meaningful participation of women in peace and security, initiatives at local but also at national level for implementation of e.g. the South Sudan NAP, CEDAW and CRC are needed. The adoption and implementation of laws embed results achieved at community level but stimulate also further change in social norms. Important actors here are the civil society, whose capacity needs to be strengthened for sustainable change in policies, structures and processes. This is a new project, building on activities related to psychosocial support, peacebuilding and prevention of GBV activities implemented by other actors. Beneficiaries are community members in Nimule payam and Melijo IDP site in Melijo payam. More specifically, girls and women as well as the community as a whole through a more enabling environment for girls and women that creates a stronger society. Training and mentoring of psycho-social Focal points, Capacity Building of local Justice courts, Awareness raising on psycho-social distress  and women and girls rights. Training of female and male gender advocate on gender and gender transformative processes, mobilisation of youth to promote gender equality, community dialogues, capacity building of peace committees, lobby and advocacy, monitoring, evaluation and documentation. It will be important to maintain the same key actors during the length of the project and building their capacity to lead and thrive past the end of the project period.  Ownership by the local community will be important in order to sustain the changes made to behaviour, norms and attitudes. Furthermore, Plan and partners are currently engaged in discussion to submit a new funding proposal for 20201-20205 which will build on success in this project period and also address the challenges to build a more sustainable programme owned and led by the girls and women of the community.