How a Wife's Tiny Food Shop Brought Financial Freedom and Escape from Domestic Violence

In the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh, Rohingya women are overcoming the societal restraints that bound them at home in Myanmar and becoming leaders and change-makers in their community. Despite resistance from the men, hundreds of women in the camp banded together to form a group called Shanti Mohila. This allowed them to push for more peace and justice and issues like domestic violence, and they even received support from Legal Action Worldwide to prosecute crimes against the Rohingya people.

A unique Kuria tribal tradition in Tanzania called nyumba ntobhu (“house of women”) allows two women to legally marry despite a national persecution of homosexuality. The younger woman in the pair will bear children (by outside men) to become part of the older woman's family, thus ensuring that the older woman's land and lineage are passed on. Although this is a successful solution for some women who are escaping domestic violence, financial dependence, or loneliness, for other women it can be as limiting as a heterosexual codependent relationship.

Sylvia Acan, co-founded Golden Women vision, an organization that teaches Ugandan women to bake cakes with the aim of helping them improve their social economic status. Many of the women, like Acan, became victims of sexual assault or gender based violence during the Ugandan war insurgency. Now, Golden Women Vision has “61 members: widows, single mothers (some whose children were abducted and never returned), domestic abuse survivors and former abductees.”

Women-led dialogue circles in Maiduguri, Nigeria, have drawn over 1,000 gang members into conversation about peace, persuading some to renounce violence and become community advocates.

A community-based cooperative of gender-based-violence survivors in Kasuwan Magani, trained by the NGO EWEI through its "Together We Can" project, has established a local safe space and referral network, which has improved reporting and response to sexual and gender-based violence in a rural Kaduna community.

To help tackle gender-based violence, some schools in Uganda are shifting the focus of violence prevention efforts to focus on educating boys around harmful behavior rather than solely teaching girls how to stay safe. Both teachers and parents say they have seen behavioral improvements among students who have participated in programs emphasizing respect and gender equality.

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

Groups of women, in collaboration with local charity organization Daughters of Charity, are working together to create HAL (helpful active listening) circles to help survivors of sexual and gender-based violence heal. HAL circles are women-to-women groups led by those trained in supportive communication skills, the effects of trauma on the mind and body and healthy coping methods. Over the past several years, the group has connected with 1,320 survivors.

Boys Champion educates young boys on healthy masculinity, combatting cultural norms that lead to sexual and gender-based violence through various outreach initiatives, mentorship opportunities, and events held at local schools. Since 2018, the group has reached more than 10,000 young boys, teaching them ways to promote gender equality in their communities.

Members of the B’laan ethnic group in a community in the Philippines are improving their livelihoods by foraging for coffee beans excreted by wild palm civets. They can sell the beans at a premium price because they are used to make a luxury coffee brew. And the practice encourages the locals to protect the wild animals, which benefits the ecosystem, too.