Africa-Press – Gambia. The deeply rooted cultural traditional practise dubbed Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and other negative issues, according to her, is affecting women and girls in the country, adding that ‘we must eliminate violence against women and girls in order to prevent community violence.
“We want the community leaders to have an understanding of these modules so that they can implement it in their respective communities. Last year we started with URR and trained the same structures. This time, it is CRR and we will be proceeding to other regions. We want them to be fully equipped so that violence against women and girls are eliminated because community violence can lead to national violence and it can lead to national disaster. Therefore, in order to avert that, let’s work closely with our communities in ensuring that this menace is eliminated.”
The newly appointed Women’s Bureau deputy executive director was speaking yesterday at the opening of five days capacity building training for community structures (MDFFTS, TAC, CCPC and VDCs on magret theatre, stepping stone and positive deviance approaches. The training was funded by UNICEF.
“We are here to train community leaders on approaches geared towards eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls at community levels because currently, all the things that have been done have been done by government institutions or some civil societies organisation.” She added that their sustainability mechanism is to ensure that communities take ownership of the fight against GBV, FGM/C among others.
“Those interventions would one day stop because most of them are funded by donors. As we already know there is donor fatigue. Funding is diminishing but how do we get the communities to take ownership of these initiatives and work with their community members in order to eliminate all these forms of violence in the community is key,” she pointed out.
“If you get information and you feel like you can’t solve it yourself, then try and consult the next person that is closer to you with the objective of ensuring that this violence is eliminated in our community so that we can have rapid development. Any community with violence, there would be no development thus that’s why we are working closely with partners to stop the menace.”
Ousman Bah, the deputy governor of CRR, dwelled on the significance of the forum, and thus urged for active participation from the participants in ensuring that they tackle GBV and other negative issues affecting women and girls.
For his part, Aba Sanyang, the governor of CRR, said the fight against GBV and other negative issues affecting women and girls should be a priority for all.
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