UN Women has announced that its How to design projects to ending violence against women toolkit will officially launch next month, giving organisations across the region a locally produced resource to help them design effective programmes and access funding from donors around the world.
Developed as part of the organisation’s Pacific Regional Ending Violence against Women Facility Fund (Pacific Fund), the toolkit is the first of its kind in the Pacific and comes in response to the two biggest challenges facing the region’s NGOs and governments in addressing the unacceptably high levels of gender-based violence: funding and capacity.
The announcement comes as the world recognises Orange Day, a global day of public awareness raising about violence against women and girls that falls on the 25th of every month as part of the UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign instigated by the UN Secretary General.
Highly practical and based on local case studies, the toolkit is a simple yet comprehensive guide to designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating projects working to end violence against women and girls. Crucially for organisations in the Pacific, the Toolkit also includes a section on how they can develop realistic budgets for their projects and how to successfully apply for funding from a wide range of donors.
Ume Wainetti, National Convenor of the Papua New Guinea Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee, has had a preview of the handbook and says it provides guidelines that have been needed in the Pacific for a long time.
“We have attended trainings on preparing project submissions but we had not had any trainings given specifically on gender-based violence. I went through the document and found it very easy to read and understand. I personally look forward to use this handbook and to help other NGOs seeking funding to use the handbook.”
Ms Wainetti adds that local NGOs continue to miss out on funding opportunities to better-resourced international organisations because they do not have skills and knowledge around proposal writing skills and designing programmes on gender-based violence.
UN Women’s Pacific Fund is principally funded by the Australian Government and is currently working with more than 20 local organisations and government departments on projects aimed at making a measurable difference in the lives of women and girls across the region. Since it was established in 2009, the Fund has authorised more than 40 grants of up to US$100,000 each to projects across seven countries.
Pacific Fund Manager Roshika Deo says that the results so far from those grantee organisations show that there is great potential for local organisations and governments to continue making a real contribution to ending violence against women and girls in the Pacific.
“To do that, however, they need support both in terms of funding and capacity. This toolkit is one way for UN Women to share our expertise and lessons learned in the region on ending violence against women and girls with a much larger group of organisations, which will hopefully see more locally-developed programmes funded and implemented, and ultimately lead to safer, violence free communities.”
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