SVRI Forum 2024: Enabling Safe School Environments
In partnership with Safe to Learn, What Works: Global Impact, and UNESCO, the Coalition will host a Participant-Driven Event at the SVRI Forum 2024 in Cape Town. “Enabling Safe School Environments” will make an urgent case across diverse violence prevention coalitions to embrace schools as a strategic entry point to prevent all forms of violence against children and gender-based violence.
The field of violence against children (VAC) prevention is growing. We now sit at a critical point where many choices are being made on how to best invest in this work, and we know there are strong strategic reasons for prioritising the prevention of VAC in and through schools as part of the larger violence prevention movement. We know violence is not just an act – it is an experience, one with far-reaching impacts throughout young peoples’ lives, and there is no better place than school to begin promoting non-violent norms.
On 23rd October at 13:00 SAST, this event will convene a panel discussion focused on leveraging education and school-based interventions to prevent VAC and all forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and gender-based violence (GBV) through the life-course. We will explore education settings as a platform for scaling effective violence prevention interventions and the multiple positive outcomes of the absence of violence on learning. The space further hopes to highlight the many synergies across the interconnected movements of VAC, VAWG, SRGBV and IPV prevention movements so we may work together towards our common goal of a more violence-free and gender equal world.
The Coalition for Good Schools and its members hope this participant-driven space will help participants better understand South-led interventions and the evidence behind them that points to schools as an ideal entry point for violence prevention work.
We know that success in this work requires us to focus on systemic change. This means addressing the entire education delivery system, starting with national level policies through to the delivery infrastructure that the education system provides: standardized curricula, national teacher training programs, regular oversight and monitoring of what is happening in schools, influence on school ethos and the operational culture of the school and its leadership, not to mention the ability to tap into broader community and parental involvement in children’s education, safety and well-being.
If we truly understand violence as an experience, not simply an act, we must invest in improving children’s entire experience of being at school. By engaging the whole school to create a more non-violent and just operational culture, we can create meaningful opportunities for school-based protagonists to create and lead a process of change. We can address school operational policies and mechanisms for accountability to better promote children’s dignity. We can also embed practical ideas that promote positive gender norms, challenge harmful expressions of masculinity, and cement in learners’ minds the core concepts of justice, accountable leadership, and positive mental health.
Through practical examples of such an approach, from places like Uganda where Raising Voices has implemented the Good School Toolkit in over 1,500 schools, to Aulas en Paz where the Classrooms of Peace approach has been creating non-violent school environments towards a peaceful society in Colombia, to Right to Play where play-based approaches are being scaled as a whole school approach in Pakistan, the Coalition for Good Schools and its allies hope this participant-driven event will be a powerful reminder that the time for the education sector – and the broader violence prevention movement – to invest in violence prevention in schools is NOW.
Will you be at SVRI 2024 in Cape Town? We warmly welcome you to join us for this exciting discussion.
Also at the SVRI Forum…
The Coalition and some of our key partners and allies will also be well-represented at SVRI. Here are just a few of the sessions we are looking forward to – we will keep this updated leading up to the Forum. Please join us!
Monday 21 October Workshops
Workshop 1: Practice-Based Knowledge for Women’s and Feminist Movements to End Violence against Women and Girls: Co-Creating an Agenda – with Africa Hub coordinators Raising Voices
Workshop 11: Engaging Children, Adolescents, Survivors, and Communities in Child Sexual Violence Research through Participatory Approaches: Challenges and Opportunities
Workshop 19: Implementation Science – with Coalition co-founder Dr. Shanaaz Mathews
Tuesday 22 October
Participant Driven Event
07:00-09:00 | Working with Governments to Keep Children Safe from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Schools. A Conversation with the World Bank and CPC Learning Network – with Africa Hub coordinators Raising Voices and Coalition co-founder CPC Learning Network. Register here and see further details below.
Venue: Hall 8.2
11:00-12:30 Parallel Session 1
1.3. Schools and Higher Education Institutions
Embedding violence prevention in existing religious and education systems: Initial learning from formative research in the Safe Schools Study in Zimbabwe
Venue: Hall 8.1
Wednesday 23 October
09:00 – 10:30 Plenary II: Scale Up
Scaling a whole-school violence prevention approach across 1000 schools in Uganda: Lessons from research and practice
Venue: Hall 5/6
17:00 – 18:30 Parallel Session VI: Four-Minute Presentations
FMP Sessions 6.5 & 6.6: VAW and VAC prevention and response research and programmes
Prevalence and experience of non-partner sexual violence among in-school adolescent girls in low-income communities in Southwestern Nigeria – A cross-sectional survey
Venue: Daisy/Freesia/Orchid
Creating a safe environment for girls to learn and thrive: Development of a safeguarding policy to mitigate school related sexual and gender-based violence in Nigeria
Venue: Nerina/Protea
Thursday 24 October
15:00 – 16:30 Parallel Session VIII
8.3. Understanding Violence against Adolescents
“If you dare turn him down, he would then beat you for every slight mistake you do”: Insights from Ugandan schoolgirls on teacher sexual violence
Venue: Hall 8.1
Do you have a session that you want to highlight related to addressing violence against children in and through schools? Please reach out to us at [email protected] – we want to hear from you and highlight your exciting work!
Further details on events below: