Raising Voices and the rights of Women and children

lr-slideshow type=GROUP1Raising Voices has been in existence since 1999. We are a local NGO working on empowering the community to prevent violence against women and children. The organization engages people communities and the nation generally on making violence against women and children socially unacceptable. Raising Voices started work on preventing violence against children formally in 2004. We began with extensive research on violence against children VAC in Uganda. VAC includes physical sexual emotional and economic violence.Raising Voicesis a nonprofit organization based in Kampala Uganda working toward the prevention of violence against women and children. Our work strives to influence the power dynamics shaping relationships between women and men girls and boysby catalyzing social change in communities rigorously studying and learning from the work we do and sharing our experiences to shape the field.Since our founding in 1999 we have grown from a small group of committed activists to a team of thirty vibrant staff. Our partners have increased from a few local collaborators to over sixty organizations across the region. As we have grown our identity as an organization has been shaped by our experiences in violence prevention. At Raising Voices we strive for meaningful impact honor passion and rigor and have fostered a small but dedicated team. We have remained committed to the communities of the Horn East and Southern Africa with increasing influence on action and dialogue across the globe.Over the past twelve years we have cultivated an impassioned form of activism awakened critical thinking and inspired change in homes communities schools organizations and government. From injecting new ideas to creating the tools for acting on those ideas our efforts have combined to inspire a new way of being.What role have you played towards thechildren and women in Uganda in thelast 10 yearsIn 2006 we introduced the Good SchoolToolkit which is now in more than 500schools. We looked t the environmentin schools and discovered that it does notfavour learning for the children. The GoodSchools Programme aims to change the operationalculture ofschools to becomemoreresponsiveto childrensneeds and learningthroughprevention ofviolence againstchildren.Creation ofa conducive learningenvironmentimproves learning outcomes.Ittakes thecollective ofpupils or studentsteachersschool administratorsparents andthecommunityto create a good school.We run a multimedia campaign onradio TV newspapers film and other nontraditionalmediawith theaimofcultivatinga national dialogue on AC.We havebeen socialized to believe that it is okay for example to beat children when they makemistakes. Children are not listened to. Theyhave no view. However we must recognizethat hey are people just like adults are andthey have rights.