Minimising domestic violence against women and children.

Gender equality and gender empowerment

SASA! is a groundbreaking approach to prevent violence against women and children developed by Raising Voices.

With an increase in poverty comes an increase in frustration. Imagine not being able to feed you family. Imagine a child starving seeing a pot of vegetables and eating the lot feeling full for the first time in months. But that pot was the only meal that day for the entire family of 8 people who now has to go to bed hungry.

This project brings about education and an opportunity to find new ways to discuss issues in a family. What is discipline and what is abuse? Is it okay to question social norms? What are the benefits of gender equity and gender empowerment? These, and many other, are the questions our dedicated community activists asks their fellow community members.

Domestic violence and abuse of women and children is a growing issue in rural Tanzania. Our solution is three-fold: reducing poverty, increase knowledge, and change social norms.

We know that violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of increased HIV infections. We know that the power imbalance between men and women fuels these pandemics. But how can we address such a complex and deeply rooted issue? SASA! was developed as a response to this question.

It is a comprehensive approach documented in a user-friendly project tool. Many organisations, institutions, and groups interested in mobilising communities to prevent violence against women and HIV are using SASA!.

How SASA! works

SASA is a Swahili word that means ‘now’. Now is the time to take action to prevent violence against women and HIV! It is also an acronym for the four phases of community mobilization that scale up the stages of change to enable a community to move through a series of activities and experiences naturally. Each phase uses four different strategies to engage community members in a variety of ways.

START

AWARENESS

SUPPORT

ACTION

SASA! includes practical resources, activities and monitoring and assessment tools for local activism, media and advocacy, communication materials and training that organisations working on violence or HIV/AIDS can use to incorporate these cross-cutting issues into their work.

SASA! progress

Cedar Tanzania’s field team received training in 2016 and successfully implemented the START phase of SASA! in 2017. Continuous training of our field team is essential and the second phase, AWARENESS, was started in 2018 and continued into first half of 2019.

The two remaining phases, SUPPORT and ACTION were implemented through 2019-2021.

We have now concluded one full circle of SASA! in Kamanga Village, and we are ready to expand this project to other areas and villages.

Raising Voices and SASA!

Raising Voices is an NGO based in Uganda, who we have partnered with since 2015. They envision relationships, families, and communities where each voice is heard, each right respected, and where each member can live free from violence. Through their SASA! initiative, Raising Voices works alongside communities to explore the issues of power imbalance between men and women as a key driver of violence against women and girls.

The Cedar Tanzania SASA! team collaborate with Kamanga village, together with 20 motivated village members, who have been trained in the SASA! methodology to become Community Activists. They facilitate discussions in the local community, which explore power: what it is, who has it, how it is used, how it is abused, and how power dynamics between women and men can change for the better. Raising Voices has provided expert support to us through training, technical visits, and the sharing of best practise with other organisations delivering SASA! We are very grateful for their support.

If you want to know more about SASA! please contact us:

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