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In Belize, the Spotlight Initiative programme made significant advances in strengthening and scaling up Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) at the secondary school level through a partnership with the Ministry of Education. The CSE was revised to meet international standards and scaled up to all secondary schools, sharing important anti-VAWG messages.
"CSE training is inclusive and open to everyone and addressed sexual education for all genders and orientations." - Community-level Peer Educator in Belize City
However, not all adolescents and youth attend school. In an effort to…
Spotlight Initiative worked with UNFPA and the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago (FPATT) to implement the Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Programme (CHAMP). This supported young people and adult caregivers across three regions of Trinidad and Tobago. This programme was established with a view to addressing HIV prevention but, through community engagement, reduced the likelihood of youth engaged in the programme responding to peer pressure to engage in adolescent sexual activity.
Spotlight Initiative trained around 25 community leaders as…
Spotlight Initiative in Haiti supported the Determinants of Violence Against Women and Girls study, which highlighted the political and economic sociocultural factors (values, religious beliefs, attitudes and behaviours) that instigate or support violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence. The results of this study have informed the “Pathways for a Prevention” strategy, which will feed into the national violence against women and girls prevention model and the national education programme for the elimination of domestic violence against women and girls.
In 2020, Spotlight Initiative supported a National Parenting Programme in Grenada with a campaign called “Step Up Your Parenting Game”. This campaign targeted men and women who were parents and guardians. The focus of the messaging was on improving parenting approaches for the benefits of their children. This campaign included a number of sub-messages including:
“No matter who, no matter, what, there is no excuse for abuse”
“Children need their fathers: they need love, support and encouragement”
“Feeling stressed? Check your B.E.T. (body, environment, thoughts)”
“Communicate with your…
In 2022, the Spotlight Initiative programme in Trinidad and Tobago aimed to improve CSOs’ access to grants through a three-tiered approach of stakeholder consultations, capacity building, and adapting processes to be more context-relevant. The objective was to support resource mobilisation and increase institutional, operational and technical capacities for long-term and sustainable work on EVAWG.
The programme began by consulting a Civil Society National Reference Group to discuss feedback on Spotlight Initiative’s funding opportunities and requirements. CSOs provided feedback that the…
Participatory monitoring ensures a needs-driven approach that adapts as new needs arise, enabling programmes to help identify appropriate interventions to meet the specific needs of survivors and civil society organisations.
Spotlight Initiative in Belize embraced a collaborative approach with civil society partners throughout the programming cycle, including in monitoring and reporting processes. Through community-based dialogues with implementing partners and beneficiaries, stakeholder consultations, and programmatic visits, the voices of civil society partners were meaningfully reflected…
At the global level, Spotlight Initiative consolidates country-level information received into a central result-based management system called the SMART platform. This monitoring and reporting tool gathers performance data at the outcome and output levels, linking programme-related result indicators so evaluators can better measure the efficiency and effectiveness of Spotlight Initiative. Result indicators are specific to each country or regional programme. For outcomes, shared indicators are defined in the overall and regional result frameworks.
Programme stakeholders are obligated to…
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 Trinidad and Tobago, Spotlight Initiative worked closely with the Office of the Prime Minister Gender and Child Affairs Division (OPM GCA) to support consultations for a National Strategic Action Plan (NSAP) on GBV. Although a plan had previously been developed for the period 2016-2020, it did not receive Cabinet approval and it was not until 2020, with the launch of Spotlight Initiative, that the persistent advocacy efforts spearheaded by UN Women's Caribbean regional office came to fruition.
“Spotlight Initiative allowed it [NSAP] to be back on the table as an important document in…
In the Caribbean region, Spotlight Initiative has been supporting the development of ethical guidelines for data collection. The guidelines were informed by User Producer Dialogues held across the region that brought together representatives from ministries, departments, agencies, and civil society organisations to discuss VAWG data collection and management. These dialogues underscored the urgency of addressing administrative data as a complement to prevalence data, the need for harmonisation of tools and processes for data collection and management, and the priority for standardisation…