A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Empowerment Women for Excellence Initiative (EWEI) and the United Nations Trust Fund (UNTF) have united to end violence against women in Kaduna State.
The stakeholders offered psychosocial support to 60 women survivors of GBV in Kaduna State.
The beneficiaries were drawn from Kujama and Kasuwan Magani communities in Chikun and Kajuru LGAs involving women who are people of low income, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) as a result of banditry and survivors of GBV.
At a recent one-day seminar in Kaduna, the monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) focal person of The Together We Can (TWC), Mendie Jeremiah, said the programme started last year and will end in 2026.
Jeremiah said that the participants would also be provided with counselling services as another component of the TWC project is expected to begin, adding that the seminar seeks to address the issue of trauma, leveraging on their experts from Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Kaduna.
He also disclosed that, during the project, men and boys from the communities would be engaged in behavioural change to serve as their sister’s keepers.
“This project started in December 2023, and we will be rounding it up by November 2026. Over this period, we will have a series of psychosocial support services for the women beneficiaries we are working with. Of course, it will be extended to other members of the communities.
“We also have the economic components of the project. Today is our first seminar with the women psychosocial support seminar for our direct primary beneficiaries, and we are taking them through different series”.
He said, “We have the project implementation team and technical expert team members, made up of persons from the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital. We also have the Salama Assaults Referral Centres (SARC), Ministry of Human Services and security agencies.”
He further said that the women would be taken through definitions because they want them to understand what the key terminologies are when it comes to issues of GBV, how they can know and access the various psychosocial support services that are available, and even whether they have these services in their communities.
“We are also looking at providing them with counselling services as another component of the project. So, having gone through our seminar session, I understand the need to access the services for healing because a lot of persons are being traumatic, but they don’t know that they need these services, and that is why part of what we are doing today with the support from Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital we conducted a GHQ12 mental health assessment for them. It’s a standardised and general assessment tool to assess one’s mental health,” he said.
Jeremiah also disclosed that experts from the federal neuropsychiatric hospital would analyse the women’s situation and give feedback and recommendations on what services each woman would require.
Speaking with journalists after the event, Nankat Ndam, the centre manager for Salama Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Kakuri, Kaduna, said they regularly get reports across their four centres in the state.
Ndam lamented that female survivors are in the majority of reported cases, with few male cases, stressing that several people keep quiet because there are a lot of stigmas around SGBV, hence the need to support survivors so they can come out to break the culture of silence for perpetrators to be brought to book and get justice for victims.
She also disclosed that the four centres in Kaduna town recorded at least 200 cases every month while stressing that the centres practice a survivor-centred approach, which means they focus more on the survivor’s well-being even when every citizen is a priority.
While sharing new lessons learnt, one of the participants, Amina Yusuf, said that the training unravelled a lot of psychosocial support services available to them in the society, which they never knew about, while expressing delight in the TWC project and to the NGO for the initiative.
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