Sonke Report to Norad

In 2013, NORAD approved a grant in the amount of NOK 6.1 million, which was supported by a follow up grant of NOK 3 million in 2015, for the period April 1 to December 31, 2015, and subsequently extended to June 30, 2016. This current grant scheme for women’s rights and gender equality builds on the work funded by NORAD over the previous 18 months, and proposed that Sonke and MenEngage Asia, Africa and MENA increase the scale, impact and sustainability of the work through the following five key objectives:

1. Sonke, the Centre for Health and Social Justice in India and the ABAAD Resource Centre for Gender Equality in Lebanon to coordinate a series of South-South peer exchanges to build the operational and programmatic capacity and sustainability of MenEngage Alliance networks at national and regional levels in the Africa, MENA and South Asia regions, and to further develop and disseminate key outcomes from the 2014 MenEngage Global Symposium funded by NORAD.
2. Develop, pilot and share models for supporting men and women to engage in community mobilisation and local activism to respond to and prevent Gender Based Violence.
3. In all three regions, but with an emphasis in Africa, engage religious and traditional leaders to increase their proactive support for gender equality, SRHR and LGBTI rights.
4. Develop tools and support local capacity building to ensure widespread implementation of the NORAD funded MenEngage SRHR platform developed in the previous grant cycle.
5. Strengthen Sonke and MenEngage communications capacity, in Africa, Asia and the MENA region.