To reduce gender-based violence in the country, a group, Women at Risk International Foundation, has kicked off the second cycle of its Boys’ Conversation Café Initiative, to further educate a wider range of boys in Nigeria about gender-based violence and its negative effects.
Following the success of the first cycle of the project in 2018, the management of WARIF said it had commenced the second phase of the initiative, aimed at sensitising the boys on the role they should play in the reduction and prevention of rape and sexual violence in the society.
Commenting on the importance of the project, Founder of WARIF, Dr. Kemi DaSilva-Ibru, said educating the boys would bring about a positive attitude in them towards girls.
DaSilva-Ibru said over 160 boys, across selected secondary schools in Lagos State, would be trained in 2019 during the second phase of the BCC project, adding that it would take the form of informal dialogue sessions with groups of secondary school boys, as well as trained male volunteers, who would serve as facilitators and mentors at these sessions.
She said, “We believe that educating boys with a view to changing their existing mind set and perspective about the notion of rape and sexual violence will be transformational in the lives of these young men and will ultimately lead to a reduction in the cases of sexual and gender-based violence recorded.
“This is why the WARIF Boys’ Conversation Café project was launched in 2018, to change the existing attitudes held by boys and young men on the topic of rape and sexual violence.”
She disclosed that during the first cycle of the initiative, last year, sponsored by SAP Nigeria, 40 boys between the ages of 13 and 17 years, in Surulere Secondary School, Lagos State, were trained on the identification of the signs and prevention of gender-based violence in theircommunities.
The four-week intervention programme, she noted, impacted a significant success rate, in terms of immediate behavioural change, on the boys.
She listed some of the notable changes in the boys to include a drop in pornography addiction by 41 per cent; while about 85 per cent of the beneficiaries strongly agreed that the consent of a girl to have sex was important and should be respected. Also, 98 per cent of the beneficiaries strongly agreed to take a stand in any case of sexual abuse rather than be by-standers.
Giving further insight into the initiative, DaSilva-Ibru said, “Through the training held by BCC, we were able to see a positive change and improvement in the narrative of the young boys and we hope that with the expansion of this project, we will achieve a greater impact and a reduction in the high incidence of rape and sexual violence in our communities. “Together, we can build a society where boys and men, growing up with a positive masculinity, become protectors of women and not perpetrators of these awful acts.”
