Teenseed’s mandate is to ensure the rights of women and girls. To this aim, Teenseed has designed a program to ensure the wellness and freedom from violence for women and girls in Kiambiu known as the FFV program. It focuses on addressing child sexual abuse, and sexual and gender-based violence through the following avenues:
Prevention: This focuses on sensitization and awareness. Prevention of violence through the use of community change agents and awareness campaigns in order to shift harmful societal norms and attitudes that lead to violence. The main change agents in this project are male champions and allies, and community volunteers who undergo continuous training of trainers to gain an in-depth understanding of sexual and gender-based violence, its causes, impact and the legal frameworks around it. The information and capacity they gain through these training helps them to become trainers in the community who regularly hold community forums and educate the community, directly engage known perpetrators to change their mindsets and act as Teenseed’s ears on the ground to stop planned attacks against women and girls. Additionally we hold annual SGBV workshops with community stakeholders, activists and champions to ensure retraining.
Response - Teenseed responds to support children and women who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence through running two shelters - a safe house for minors and a shelter for adult women survivors. A survivor is housed and cared for a period of up to 6 months during which they are provided with food, basic necessities (clothes, hygiene supplies, dignity packs), medical support, psychosocial services and referral for legal support through our partners including the government through the police, chief and children’s office. We work with the local police, chief and the children’s office.
Restoration - this is an intervention that targets the survivor as an individual and the family in order to support healing and restoration within the family. Through our work the past 10 years, we have seen that sexual and gender-based violence does not just affect the survivor but also the family and this has been the basis of the restoration intervention. Additionally, psychosocial support through counseling is offered towards reintegration into the community for survivors who were in the Teenseed shelter. Additionally, Teenseed supports the economic empowerment of survivors of sexual violence to learn a new skill that can help general an income when they return to their communities.
Teenseed hosts quarterly stakeholder meetings with all EVAWG actors in the Kamukunji sub-county that includes CSOs, government stakeholders and duty bearers.