Report to Oxfam Australia
Program/Project Title: / MKABAYIOrganisation: / PROJECT EMPOWER
Contact Name: / LAURA WASHINGTON
Contact Email Address: /
Contact Telephone Number: / +27 31 3103565
Reporting Period: / JANUARY TO JUNE 2015
Director’s Signature: /
SECTION ONE: PROGRAM INFORMATION
- Progress against Objectives/Outputs/Outcomes
Please cut and paste one set of tables for each objective and they should be as they appear in the signed contract appendix.Please state if your objectives are on track. Also provide a detailed progress update on your activities, outputs and outcomes
Objective 1 / Increase young women’s access to health, safety, justice and other services / Is the objective on track with your operational plan?Yes/No/Partially, please add comment
Yes. Women are participating in community structures and using their participation on these structures to address a wide range of issues including health access and safety.
Activities / Outputs / Outcomes
1.1 Implement ten Consciousness Raising Groups (CRGs) that meet at least one fortnightly. / 74 CRG meetings plus 20 more meetings on violence were held in six communities and tengroups with over 280 women participants. In total we have had 94 CRG meetings.
Bhambayi:
80 young women between the ages of 18 and 35 in two groups have met 16 times.
Mhlasini:
40 young women between the ages of 16 and 40 in two groups have met 10times in two groups
Umlazi:
40 young women between the ages of 18 and 35have met 16 times in one group
Dakota
35 young women between the ages of 18 and 30 have met 08 times in 1 group
Zwelitsha
45 young women between the ages of 18 and 35 have met 16times in two groups
Clare Estate
35 women between the ages of 18 and 40 have met 10 times in one group.
Topics discussed under objective 1, 2 and 3 include:
- How the festive holidays were and do women were have any issues that they can talk about.
- Ukuthakatha: how does it affect our struggle as women and who benefits?
- Community Development: are we involved as women, if not why not, if yes, how have we benefited?
- Women and decision making, how influential are we in community structures that we serve?
- March 21, why are human rights such a crucial component in South Africa
- Women leaders: what makes or break women leaders.
- The danger of unresolved conflicts on young women
- Violence: our experiences of violence and how they have shaped who we are?
- Women leaders-what makes of break them.
- Democracy and decision making in our groups
- How can we ensure that we are all safe in our communities?
- Crime in our communities: how do we perpetuate this and what can we do to eradicate crime?
- Our experiences in police station and how can we assist each other?
- The “pull her down syndrome” how does this work? Why do we bring other women down and who benefits?
- Sexual enhancers-the pros and cons. How can we keep our vaginas healthy?
- Solidarity. What is solidarity and how far does it go? Principles of solidarity.
- Taking care of ourselves: necessary check-ups for women and why are these check-ups necessary?
Young women now speak openly about clinic visits and how empowering the group has been around the issues of sexual health because of the non-judgemental approach used in the CRG discussions.
Young women also share their stories with their peers and have introduced friends to the groups who have been experiencing violence, abuse or who did not have anyone to talk to about their personal issues.
Women are opening up about the anger and their experiences of sexual violence as children and the need to protect their girl children and sisters by speaking up.
There is an increased understanding of the role that rivalry and jealousy between young women plays in continuing the oppression of women and the importance of solidarity as a counter to this.
All of these activities have resulted in improved communication between young women and health care and policing service providers and increased assertion on the part of young women as users of health care sand policing services.
Increased openness about interpersonal violence and a willingness to seek police protection and intervention.
Improved co-operation with policing services.
Increased ability of young women to take independent action to protect themselves and to disclose their experiences to other young women.
These monthly meetings showcase the leadership of Mkabayi and also push for accountability from each community representatives to bring full reports and progress done in each committee. Communities also feel that if their issues are raised with Mkabayi, the conclusion is quicker and satisfactory. Example: One woman from Clare Estate who was living in fear as boys have been harassing her threatening to rape her and take her stuff in the house. She reported her case to the Safety Committee that comprised of women who did not hesitate to confront the group of young men and told them that their behaviour was not going to be tolerated. That stopped and the boys never again harassed the women.
These central monthly workshops have increased women’s understanding of their experiences, increased solidarity between women from different communities and enabled joint learning.
1.2 Ensure that young women’s health, safety and other service concerns are addressed through appropriate structures in each community / Women’s rights mobilisers have sustained relationships with eight clinics.
Umlazi: Ekuphileni and Mzomuhle clinics
Zwelitsha: Ottawa and Amaoti clinics.
Clare Estate: Clare Estate clinic.
Mhlasini: Redcliffe
Dakota: Isiphingo clinic.
Bhambayi: Inanda Newtown C
There have been more than 10 reported complaints and follow ups that were made with the clinics that we work with where women reported that they have been treated unfairly and were dismissed without accessing the services that they needed. In Bambayi five women reported to have been treated unfairly when they came for contraceptives and being convinced to opt for an implant when they would have preferred shorter term contraception.
Women’s Rights Mobilisers (WRMs) and five other women who sit on the Clinic Committee structure conducted regular visits to talk with the clinic committee staff and the manager about how important it is to give women options. A further three cases of this nature occurred in Umlazi clinic where women reported prejudiced behaviour from clinic staff particularly towards young women living with HIV. These issues were taken up in the regular meeting held with clinic staff. In this clinic Mkabayi has a slot once a month to just come and have random talks with young women on just about anything and try and address other questions that women have about their bodies, health and other services that are available for them in the clinic.
The Clare Estate clinic has issues around how they introduced the implannon to young women and the way the staff members “convinced” these young women in ‘”ushy”waysto opt for Implanon. These women were poorly informed about the Implanon and the need for adequate counselling was stressed to clinic staff.
WRMs from all the communities now visit all the clinics at least once a month to get a feeling of how things are on the ground. They have negotiated these random visiting slots with the clinic management and are allowed to walk into the clinic and hold conversations with the clinic attendants. This was because the Clinic Committee meetings did not happen as regularlyas Mkabayi would like and the agenda is not about women’s issues and how the clinics can improve their services for young women. The agenda is the same and/as dictated by protocols of all clinics. It is then hard to squeeze in new ideas during clinic committee meetings and it is usually clinic procedures that are discussed and they never toucheon women’s issues. However women still participate in the clinic committee meetings as it is the perfect platform to showcase Mkabayi’s presence in each clinic.
Issues that usually come during these monthly clinic visits:
- Pap smears, the difficulties of getting pap smears donefor women in public clinics and how women struggle to get their results. Two women for Clare Estate and Dakota did not even know what a pap smear was but the WRM picked that up when women were sharing their experiences and describing the procedures that were performed on them and how they did not understand what was going on. Since these procedures were conducted they were told to come back for their results. One woman did go back for herpap smear results and was told to come back to the clinic after three months. Another woman from Clare Estate did not even bother to go back as she did not even understand the importance of pap smears. The WRM from Clare Estate is assisting both these women with following this up. They have been to the clinic and were told to come back at the end of July.
Following theseries of meetings on the April violence, seven women have requested counselling as they were still traumatised by their childhood experiences. We referred them to Lifeline who counselled them and three women are still attending counselling sessions as they needed more than one session. Two women were from Clare Estate and six were from Zwelitsha.
One woman from Zwelitsha who had been experiencing severe physical, sexual and verbal abuse from her boyfriend for the pastthree years, requested Project Empower to help her follow up with the Verulam court as to what she can do as she had tried many times to have her boyfriend arrested but failed. As a result this young man was continuingto beat her up and she was living in fear. At one stage he tried to abduct her son and even attempted to kill her. Mkabayi accompanied her to the Verulam police station that assisted her and encouraged her to open a case because all she had was the protection order that had expired. She has opened a case.
In Clare Estate three women have by themselves applied for protection orders against their abusive boyfriends. They shared their stories of violence in the CRG discussion meeting and said if they encounter any problems, they will seek support from the group.
Community coordinating meetings are held regularly in each community. The aim of these meetings is to follow up on issues discussed in clinic committees, community policing forums, safety committees, youth committees and other community committees.
1.3 Host monthly central workshops that include at least five members of each CRG to develop human rights understanding / Three monthly central workshops have been held. We have reached 150 women from the ten groups.
Topics discussed:
How we can exercise our human rights as women.
The history of women’s oppression in South Africa
Different forms of violence: interpersonal violence and structural violence.
Objective 2 / Improve communities’
resilience against natural and other disasters / Is the objective on track with your operational plan?
Yes/No/Partially, please add comment
Yes, more than twenty women from different communities have rearranged their home settings to much safer arrangements and women have been assisting each other with these new arrangements. Women have also came together to do regular check ins about hazards in their communities and how they can get rid of them. If they feel they cannot address the issue on their own, they bring in community structures who can assist them with these dangerous hazards. The DRR issues have also been part on the CPF meeting discussions as it a critical part of safety in all communities.
Activities / Outputs / Outcomes
2.1 Ensure that disaster risk reduction issues are from time to time addressed in CRGs as appropriate to the time of year / Two topics on DRR were discussed in these ten groups. Each group held two CRG discussions on the DRR totalling to 20 meetings on DRR in six communities.
The first topic was:
My home. My life. Am I safe? What makes us vulnerable to danger or even death in our homes?
The second topic was:
How to keep our areas safe and take charge of eradicating all unsafe hazards in our communities.
Two women reported to have lost all they have due to negligence of leaving the candle burning and thus burning the whole house.
Another woman from Dakota spoke about how her house got burnt down due to electricity wiring that was not properly wired. She spoke about how she had seen this electricity attempting to bust and shocking her in the house but did not think about how she could improve that situation. She continued and stayed with the tripping electricity until it bust and her whole house became ashes. She had seen it happening in other people’s home but thought it would never happen to her.
Women spoke about the need to rearrange their homes.
Five other women from different communities spoke about how their children got burnt because of negligence. Two children got burnt by water because their kettles are not out of reach of children.
Three more women shared that their kids were burnt by porridge when they dragged it from the stove.
The other two children crawled into boiling water as their mothers went outside to get cold water. / The “my home” discussion was new to participants in the new groups, and to many new members in existing groups that had covered this topic before. We used old photos that were taken in some of the communities showing people’s homes. These pictures helped generate discussion on small actions that could be taken to ensure that our homes were safe especially by being more careful in the way we arranged our homes and taking precautions with electricity and wiring. Participants shared how powerful the session was and discussed how there is a tendency to shift responsibilities when we do have some power to save ourselves and to improve our lives by taking small simple actions.
Communities with rivers (Clare Estate, Bhambayi and Umlazi J) report continued efforts to locate an appropriate dumping site for rubbish and to ensure that rubbish is kept out of the rivers.
2.2 Ensure that disaster risk reduction issues are from time to time addressed in appropriate community forums / DRR issues are raised in appropriate community forums, and have now become an item on CPF meetings.
Participants have started challenging themselves about changing their communities.
Objective 3 / Provide leadership training to young women’s committees, including committee skills, advocacy training, and conflict reduction / Is the objective on track with your operational plan?
Partially – our initial approach to leadership training was skills focused and overlooked the importance of developing a consciousness in young women of themselves as leaders. We have focused on this consciousness element in the past six months and have laid a good foundation for further leadership training.
Activities / Outputs / Outcomes
3.1 Deliver six one day
sessions to at least five CRGs aimed at developing
leadership and organisational skills to CRG / Three leadership training sessions have been conducted and 150 participants have benefited from this.
The leadership trainings focused on the following questions:
- What is leadership?
- Why women leaders are not acknowledged?
- What role can we play as community members to support our leaders?
- What makes good leaders?
- What are the causes of conflict in leadership positions and how can we overcome them?
- Black women and leadership.
- How can we form effective and sustainable structures in our communities?
In role play exercises, women leaders were shown to be hard, not easy to talk to and generally bad leaders. Further exploration revealed the perception that women are not meant to be leaders as they have domestic responsibilities, are emotional and unsympathetic to other women.
More than five role plays depicting male leaders showed a perception of male leaders as being able to compromise, open to being challenged and flexible.
These perceptions were challenged through the workshop series.
A further five sessions were run with the WRMs and the PE team aimed at deepening participant’s understanding of Southern African history, and of political and economic processes in Africa more broadly, processes of change in the country and the role of women. / An increased appreciation of women’s leadership potential and of the leadership qualities demonstrated daily by group participants.
WRMs had frequently expressed doubts about the ability of small groups of people to become agents of change in their communities, and reported that the seminar series gave them an increased understanding of the possibility of change.
Objective Four / Conduct provincial efforts to support local advocacy
Activities / Outputs
4.1 Participate in provincial
and national Shukumisa
campaign / Project Empower has participated in provincial and national meetings and communications of the Shukumisa campaign. / Increased national profile and networking.
- Highlights and Challenges
Highlights