A MenEngage Africa team comprising of Mphokuhle Mabhena and Rafael Cazarin from our Social and Structural Drivers (SSD) portfolio as well as Josephine Mukwendi, our Training co-ordinator, are in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), facilitating a two-day workshop with faith leaders and communities to help them challenge sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and to promote gender equality in their communities. The workshop, which starts today, 27th March 2017 and ends tomorrow, 28th March 2017, is being run in partnership with Congo Men’s Network (Comen Asbl).
The programme includes a series of group activities and individual assessments on the struggles of faith leaders when facing SGBV. From Monday morning (9:00 am) to Tuesday afternoon (13:00) the facilitators will discuss with 21 faith leaders across various denominations, including Pentecostal & Charismatic churches, Muslims, Catholic, Anglican, Baptists and others. In addition, faith leaders will be sharing the work they perform in their communities as well as their role models when it comes to challenging SGBV.
Our objectives include:
- Giving faith leaders practical tools and concepts to address sexual and gender-based violence and gender equality;
- Learning from their contextualised experiences and processing this information into solutions; and
- Developing new approaches to challenge SGBV in interfaith and multicultural contexts.
These three objectives inform one mission: evoking peace, justice and human rights as core values in our communities.
