Lessons learnt from engaging opinion leaders to address intimate partner violence in Rwanda

ABSTRACT

A critical component of community-level efforts to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) is the meaningful engagement of opinion leaders. This paper assesses the successes, challenges, and processes of change that Indashyikirwa – an IPV prevention programme in Rwanda – encountered while engaging opinion leaders to combat IPV. The paper draws on three rounds of qualitative interviews with 13 opinion leaders, two rounds of interviews with 12 community activists, and two rounds of interviews with six staff members. Thematic analysis was conducted and the data triangulated. The paper offers lessons learnt regarding how to effectively engage opinion leaders for IPV prevention programming.

KEYWORDS:

• Aid – Accountability, Monitoring and Evaluation
• Gender and diversity
• sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the Indashyikirwa partners of CARE International Rwanda, RWAMREC, and Rwanda Women’s Network who have provided generous and valuable input into validating and interpreting the findings. We also wish to thank all the participants for sharing their experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Parents evening forums (Umugoroba w’ababyeyi) allow issues concerning family welfare, including child abuse, domestic violence and family conflict, to be identified and solved at the village level during regular meetings, apart from those which require the law to intervene.

2 Sectors are the third level administrative sub-division in Rwanda. Rwandan provinces are subdivided into 30 districts, which are divided into 416 sectors. Sectors are further divided into 2148 cells.

3 The National Women’s Council in Rwanda, established in 1996, is a social forum where girls and women pool their ideas to solve their problems and participate in the development of the country. The council has structures from the grassroots up to the national level, and allows for women’s participation in local governance at all administrative levels.

4 The SASA! activist kit can be accessed at: http://raisingvoices.org/sasa.

5 Umuganda refers to community work where traditionally people gather as a group to provide free labour for the vulnerable members of the community (Rwiyereka 2014). It takes place on the last Saturday of every month where people gather, including ministers and leaders from all levels, to discuss national goals, issues and possible solutions and apply these to their local contexts. This allows for rapid and effective communication between central and local leaders.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by DFID-UK as part of the Global What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls Programme.

Notes on contributors

Erin Stern

Erin Stern is an Honorary Assistant Professor with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the study coordinator and lead qualitative researcher of the evaluation of Indashyikirwa in Rwanda. Her background is in qualitative research and uptake, with expertise in prevention of gender-based violence and gender transformative programming evaluation. She has extensive experience conducting research for programme formation and evaluation for various organisations, including UNDP, CARE International, Promundo, Oak Foundation, Sonke Gender Justice, KMG Ethiopia, and AIDS-Free World. Dr Stern is a Senior Associate with the Prevention Collaborative.

Lori Heise

Lori Heise is a Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), with a joint appointment in the School of Nursing. She has over 25 years of experience working in the areas of gender equity, social change and women’s economic and social empowerment. She is an internationally recognised expert on the causes and consequences of violence against women and is Co-investigator on “What Works to Prevent Violence,” a 6 year, multi-million-dollar project to reduce gender-based violence in low and middle-income countries. Her current research focuses on preventing violence against women and children in the family, transforming gender norms, and serving as Technical Director of the Prevention Collaborative, a new global initiative designed to support evidence-based GBV prevention programming in the Global South.

Beniamino Cislaghi

Beniamino Cislaghi is an Associate Professor in Social Norms with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Before joining academia, Ben worked for various NGOs and international organisations, including UNICEF, WHO, and ILO. He worked for three years in Senegal as the Director of Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation of the NGO Tostan – an NGO internationally recognised for their work on social norms in West Africa. During this time, he also worked as a qualitative researcher with Stanford and Columbia Universities. At the LSHTM he is gathering a community of experts on social norms, advancing existing understanding of how norms change and how that change can be measured. He is also part of various initiatives on social norms, led respectively by Georgetown University, LSE, Stanford University, and ODI.