Marching towards zero tolerance for violence against women and girls in Urban India

PVWC prevents and responds to gender-based violence in urban areas through convergence of a multi-stranded approach, involving relevant stakeholders. The work focuses on participatory community engagement with multiple stakeholders to encourage critical thinking about violence against women and girls (VAWG) and its consequences, promote equitable gender norms, and reduce tolerance of VAWG. The Program has developed high‐impact strategies for primary prevention, ensure survivors’ access to protection and justice, empower women to claim their rights, mobilise communities around ‘zero tolerance for violence’, and respond to the needs and rights of women and girls. Our work on “Project TARA- Community interventions for primary and secondary prevention of VAWG: a cluster randomised controlled trial in urban India”. In informal settlements of Mumbai, we test the effects of community mobilization through groups and volunteers to prevent VAWG. Reviews suggest community mobilisation as a promising approach, but there have been few large enough trials of prevention programs. Our community intervention has been developed over 16 years of programmatic experience and two years of preparatory research, and our understanding of its effects is encapsulated in a theory of change. We will compare 24 areas receiving support services, community group, and volunteer activities with 24 areas receiving support services only, primarily in terms of effects on occurrence of intimate partner violence and domestic violence. We will also examine disclosure of violence to support services, community attitudes to violence, bystander intervention, gender equality, and occurrence of non-partner sexual violence. our vision is of a replicable community-led intervention to address the public health burden of VAWG. We are committed to end violence against women though primary, secondary and tertiary care interventions. We are committed to work through participatory approach and systems

Mode of engagement:

• Programmatic action
  SNEHA's Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) Program builds a gender-sensitive society that responds to and prevents gender-based violence in urban informal settlements in Mumbai, India.