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In 2020, Spotlight Initiative’s Latin America Regional Programme provided funding to support a Latin American coalition of WROs, feminist organisations and civil society organisations led by the Centre for Justice and International Law in Honduras. This coalition was advocating for the passage of a new protocol called “La Esperanza Protocol”, one of the first of its type, which aims to improve the investigation of and response to serious threats and attacks against human rights defenders.

A coalition of over 20 CSOs, women's and feminist organisations, spearheaded by the Center for Justice…

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 Kyrgyzstan, Spotlight Initiative worked with parliamentarians to end violence against women and girls. A key achievement was the establishment of the Council on the Rights of Women, Children, and Gender Equality in 2022, by order of the Torago of the Jogorku Kenesh (the Speaker of the Parliament). This Council serves as a crucial liaison between parliamentarians and women’s rights organisations. It supported the development of a strategic action plan for 2023-2026, focused on enhancing civic engagement in law-making. This plan facilitated the participation of women’s rights groups…

Spotlight Initiative implemented the SASA! community mobilisation approach in both Haiti and Uganda, with careful focus on high quality training and mentoring of community activists and engagement with programme stakeholders.

In Haiti, Spotlight Initiative sensitised and trained women and girl leaders using the SASA! approach. In 2021, 26 mentors were trained, equipping them with the skills to support healthy relationships, build self-esteem, and apply effective facilitation techniques necessary for.

In Uganda, Spotlight programme scaled-up the SASA! community mobilisation and norm…

Independent monitoring and reporting by civil society on programmatic contributions can be critical to upholding programme legitimacy, relevance and accountability. In 2020, the Count Me In! Consortium and several members of Spotlight Initiative Civil Society Reference Groups collectively developed a Civil Society Monitoring Toolkit to monitor the work and contributions of Spotlight Initiative. Featuring a set of 26 indicators, the Reference Groups can use the toolkit to monitor the implementation of Spotlight Initiative programming at country, regional and global levels, with indicators…

Spotlight Initiative relies on a multi-tiered and multi-sector governance structure at the global and programme levels to make decisions and steer work toward its objective of ending violence against women and girls. From the onset, Spotlight Initiative established a clear governance architecture and administrative arrangement, with three core functions: governance by global and country decision-making bodies, daily management and administration supported by dedicated teams, and implementation by the Recipient UN Organisations (RUNOs).


“A key good practice agreed across all Reference…

The Count Me In! (CMI!) Consortium is a coalition of intersectional feminist groups that have supported Spotlight Initiative and its civil society partners since 2017. Their focus has been on helping Spotlight Initiative to centre in its efforts women, girls and trans, non-binary, and intersex people who are most marginalised, and often face disproportionate rates of violence. Through consultative processes, engaging hundreds of women’s rights and feminist activists, the CMI! Consortium has successfully lobbied to strengthen feminists’ and women’s rights activists’ role in Spotlight Initiative…

In Niger, following the successful African Girls Summit in 2021, the feminist organisation "Fada de Filles" (Girls’ Fada) was founded with the support of Spotlight Initiative. A “Fada’’ is a traditional community space used for dialogue and speech, decision-making and solidarity, normally reserved for men and boys. These spaces are used to take collective decisions on community dynamics and how communities function. In the spirit of peer-to-peer mentoring, the concept of the Fada des Filles emerged from the need for girls to appropriate these spaces and contribute to transforming social norms…

Spotlight Initiative in Malawi has partnered with the Government and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to establish Safe Spaces across the country. These spaces are run by “Mentors” who are trained to support women and girls to navigate and challenge gender based violence. They are also trained to intervene and follow up in cases of child marriages.

Women and girls who access these spaces are able to access services including sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial support, and counselling. In addition, they are given opportunities to develop skills to negotiate and challenge harmful…

“Flowers in the Air” (“Flores en el aire. Cartografia para la memoria de victimas de feminicidios”) is an initiative established by Spotlight Initiative in 2021 to provide symbolic reparations, raise awareness and understanding, and help to provide justice for the families and friends of women and adolescents who have been killed through femicide.

This initiative worked with victims’ loved ones to map out the lives of these women. They did this by walking through places of significance to the memory of these women and used a digital tool to map these walks and document the memories…