The dual-gender violence prevention programme is teaching young girls to stand up for themselves and teaching young boys to respect women in their society.
Global – Lee Paiva founded ‘No Means No Worldwide’ after taking a trip to Kenya. She was faced with the tragic truth that 1 in 4 girls have been raped. Her translator pointed to every house on her street that housed a rape victim, and there were more victims than not.
In October 2009, Lee started building NMNW, by designing and piloting a violence prevention and intervention system called IMpower. She worked closely with educational and academic experts across the globe to design curricula and training materials. The aim was to stop the cycle of violence by educating girls and boys to create gender equity for community-wide, generational change.
The Consent Classes have been successful and are being implemented in every high school in Kenya. In areas where the classes are taught, rape has dropped by 50%. Boys taught in the classes intervened 74% of the time when witnessing an assault.
There are self-defence classes for the girls, and the boys are sent to ‘Postive Masculinity’ classes that promote standing up for women. These dual-gender violence prevention classes have had a massive impact on how both women and men live in Kenya.
The attitude of the young men changed in a matter of 6 classes, from taking what they thought was justifiable to becoming stand up young men that protect the women around them.
To bring an end to the global rape epidemic, NMNW believes that education and training is central to prevention and that the decades-long focus on costly, reactive aftercare must end.
NMNW has a measurable and proven model that has been verified as primary prevention to stop sexual harassment, assault and rape. Now, NMNW’s job is to spread that model as widely and as quickly as possible.
We hope to see this programme being implemented in South Africa as soon as possible. This is how we make a change!
by 