From Risk to Rescue: Keeping Girls Safe In The Climate-Hit Sundarbans

To combat the persistence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa, communities band together to spread awareness through film, religious outlets, community gatherings, and other creative means of education. While FGM is still prevalent in areas that believe it to be an important traditional practice, individuals and groups across Nigeria, Kenya, and Senegal have reduced the practice of FGM in their areas.

Truckers are ideally placed to spot and report sex trafficking. “They’ve been trained to be vigilant and they’re on the city streets, pulling into areas and being put up in hotels where this happens,” says Kylla Lanier, deputy director for Truckers Against Trafficking.

The Doula C-Hot program trains birth workers to assess and prepare pregnant clients for climate-related health risks like hurricanes and extreme heat, successfully training 12 doulas who have helped over 40 clients better prepare for environmental threats during pregnancy.

The Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA) provides comprehensive survivor support services including legal aid, medical care, shelters, and prevention programs, successfully building public trust and securing 140+ convictions while reaching 6.3 million people through awareness campaigns, though significant gaps remain between the 8,692 reported cases and actual access to justice and support services.

The community networks of women defenders in Piura are organized structures that, since 2018, have provided accompaniment, training, and inter-institutional coordination to victims of gender-based violence, combining psychological support, legal pathways, and economic empowerment. Since their founding, more women have reported violence, coordination between public institutions such as police and prosecutor's offices have improved, and survivors have transformed into leaders who break cycles of violence in their communities. Read this story in Spanish here: https://solu.news/mvw1

The L’Chaim initiative consists of a group of volunteers who visit women working in prostitution to build relationships to help these women prevent sex trafficking and to help victims find a way out. During visits, volunteers educate women on their rights, raise awareness of sex trafficking, and help them understand they may be victims and then connect them with appropriate resources, serving as a liaison between “victims” and “rescuers.”

Hope Center offers free medical services, including psychosocial and counseling services, for victims of sexual and gender-based violence. The Center also collaborates with the legal system to work to achieve justice for survivors.

The story of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act starts with a young legal aide to Sen. Joe Biden who did not identify as a feminist and knew little about the issues, but whose methodical building of a coalition and a set of arguments led to the historic passage of the law in 1994. VAWA was the first U.S. federal law to address comprehensively the ancient problem of gender-based violence. A key provision, authorizing federal civil lawsuits by victims, helped many women for six years until the Supreme Court struck it down. The law's other effects, still ongoing, include funding victim-aid groups.

A program launched by the Equal Community Foundation (ECF) in 2011 called Action for Equality (AFE) educates more than 5,000 teenage boys in Pune, India about violence against women. They spend 43 weeks learning curriculum designed to help them spot gender-based violence, how to intervene and be a model for change, and how to disrupt gender norms. The program is especially effective, because it is coordinated by young men in their 20s whom the teenage boys look up to. About 80% of participants graduate, and many families testify to their son/brother/nephew's changed behavior.

Miami is home to a special type of child welfare program called CHANCE (Citrus Helping Adolescents Negatively Impacted by Commercial Exploitation) that is designed specifically for youth in foster care that have been trafficked. CHANCE has an intensive curriculum that educates foster parents and clinicians about child sex trafficking and child trauma, and families are only allowed to take in one child at a time so that they are prepared for the child's unique health needs. Studies done on the program have found that the youth have significant improvement in many emotional and mental categories.