A non-governmental organisation in Kano State, Bridge Connect Africa Initiative (BCAI), has trained another set of 50 Gender-Based Violence (GBV) survivors and those at risk to equip them with knowledge in recognising all forms of GBV and how to handle it.
The participants, all women, were selected from across seven local government area of the state – Dawakin tofa, Bichi, Garko, Rimini Gado, Dawakin Kudu, Minjirbir and Kumbtoso.
Speaking during the two-day programme tagged, ‘Promoting Women’s Economic Growth Against Violence through Sustainable Practices in Kano’, the project team lead, Ms. Makkiyya Suleiman, said the nine-months project was carried out through BCAI’s ‘Women Against Violence Empowerment through Sustainability (WAVES)’ model programme.
She said, “The WAVES model is a model that is being developed to work at the intersection of gender based violence, women economic empowerment advocacy as well as entrepreneurship.
“We are empowering women and empowering their businesses through a sustainable model. The first phase of the project was carried out five months ago with support by the Canadian government,” she stated.
She explained that participants were taken through GBV survivor pathways, communication and boundary setting, community advocacy and legal guidance aimed at empowering them to taking action against GBV and becoming champions in their localities.
According to Ms. Suleiman, the training brought experts from various field ranging from the security(police), public health specialist and lawyers who made different presentations on subjects related to GBV to broaden their scope and how to asses support.
She maintained that the programme would also empower the women on other sustainable and entrepreneurship trainings such as Climate-smart agriculture, business development and provide business opportunity fora to enable them thrive economically.
She also highlighted BCAI’s overall goal to empower 100,000 women in Kano state by 2030, targeting to reducing the cases of GBV in the state.
