VAWG Response

VAWG response programmes focus on providing survivors with services to address their immediate and longer-term needs with a view to supporting their physical and emotional recovery and reducing negative effects on them and those they care for and about. Largely due to the work of frontline women’s organisations, we have learned a lot about the types of services that women and girl survivors want and need and how to provide these services in an accessible, appropriate and timely way to diverse women and girls in different circumstances globally. 

In this section, you can find tips, lessons and examples of approaches to improve the accessibility and quality of response services. You can take our guided journey through these pages and resources using the interactive carousel below or click on a 'key steps' menu link to read in detail about how to plan and implement work to strengthen individual response services and the whole referral system.

Spotlight Initiative

Approach to strengthening VAWG response services

Spotlight Initiative has invested considerable resources in working with governments, civil society organisations and service providers to improve access to and the quality of support services for survivors of VAWG. In each case, programmes have started with an initial mapping of existing VAWG services, their quality and gaps as well as an assessment of the multiple barriers that survivors face in accessing services and how these can be addressed.

Depending on the identified needs in each context, Spotlight Initiative programmes have then supported the strengthening of the specific services and support mechanisms for women and girl survivors of VAWG as well as to strengthen referral mechanisms between these services so that the multiple needs of diverse survivors are met. In all of this work, Spotlight Initiative has adopted survivor-centred approaches and worked to Leave No One Behind. Click on the links below to learn more about how Spotlight Initiative has worked to: