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Spotlight Initiative’s overarching goal in its Theory of Change (ToC) is to ensure that all women, especially those who are marginalised and vulnerable, live free from violence and harmful practices. Together with its partners, Spotlight Initiative aims to make concrete changes in six Outcome Areas or Pillars to end VAWG. Changes in these six Outcome Areas contribute to achieving SDG 5 and SDG 16. ToC “if/then” logic statements were then crafted for each Outcome to describe the desired results.

Example: IF/THEN TOC for Outcome 1 (Legislative and policy frameworks) 

IF
(1) Women and VAWG…

In Guyana, private sector companies are being encouraged and supported by Spotlight Initiative to use the Women’s Empowerment Principles. The first steps in the process included mapping private sector companies, NGOs, and governments that could benefit from the WEPs. Next, a series of webinars were held to increase awareness of the WEPs, which resulted in 18 organisations expressing interest in joining the programme and developing gender action plans and gender gap analysis tools. Currently, there are 1,600 signatories in the Latin American and Caribbean region. It was learned that additional…

In Mexico, domestic violence related calls to 911 sharply increased by 46% in the first few months of 2020 due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was significant demand for shelters and not enough rooms available. To respond to this, the Spotlight Initiative programme, the national government, local governments and a hotel corporation built a multi-stakeholder partnership to provide free accommodation in hotels for women experiencing violence as an interim strategy. This was a complex partnership due to the diversity of actors from the public and private sector. To address this, a…

The Spotlight’s Initiative Latin American Regional Programme developed an innovative survey tool called the Diagnostic Tool on Violence against Women. The goal of the tool is to lay bare the sexist behaviour in the leadership and culture of an organisation, and to identify organisational practices that can be designed and integrated to prevent and address VAWG. The survey is answered online through the Indic@Igualdad (Equality@Work) platform. There are multiple sections of the survey that ask staff to report on various areas related to VAWG.

From the results, an Organisational Violence…

In December 2021, Spotlight Initiative launched the WithHer Fund in partnership with the UN Foundation to provide flexible financial support to smaller, local, grassroots and WROs working to end violence against women and girls in their communities. 

The fund operates under feminist grant-making principles, focusing on flexibility, trust and transparency. To overcome common funding barriers faced by small organisations, the WithHer Fund uses a simplified application and reporting process. 

The first cohort of WithHer Fund grantees was chosen based on specific criteria, including the…