Day by day girls are continuously violated sexually in the country despite the many efforts injected into combating the vice by the government and other organisations both state and non-state.
A lot has been done in the fight against Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) but none so far seems to have yielded any fruit in Homa Bay, with residents now putting their hopes in the recently launched County SGBV policy.
Fingers are now crossed to see whether the policy will achieve its objectives or not.
However, a non-profit charity organisation dubbed Equality Effect is on the other hand implementing a different kind of approach using technology as one of its interventions in the fight against child defilement.
Through its programme dubbed 160 Girls Project, the organisation is educating pupils in Homa Bay on defilement prevention and how to respond to such cases.
The 225 school-going children from three primary schools including Wahambla, Got Rabuor and Lake Primary are being exposed to a six-month-long training in computer usage through tablets.
This intervention aims at empowering them to understand sexual violence and what it entails.
The organisation uses human rights law to make the rights of women and girls real so that they can be safe from sexual violence.
Equality Effect is working with 160 girls and victims of sexual abuse to combat this social evil that is threatening the young generation as a whole.
The project is a legal initiative that came about after a 2012 case in Meru filed by 160 victims of rape against the state for failing to protect them against rape.
However, the High Court in 2013 found that the police had failed to enforce the existing defilement laws and ordered that they needed to conduct proper, effective and professional defilement investigations.
The 160 Girls project’s goal is to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable to their actions by ensuring justice to victims as well as protecting the girls.
The use of technology ensures that learners through online lessons are enlightened on how to preserve evidence pertaining to Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) as well as reporting such cases.
There is a curriculum in the tablet called Virtual Justice which exposes learners to 12 lessons through which they are able to understand the background to the project.
The lessons also touch on steps to follow in case of defilement, including collection of evidence, visiting a health centre for medical examination, getting back to the police station and ensuring the case is followed through the justice legal system.
Each child shares a tablet with five others on a two-week-basis.
The organisation is also engaging the police and local communities by providing information on violence and ways to enhance the safety of children in order to end SGBV.
The children have a club dubbed Virtual Justice that helps in shaping decisions that affect them.
The organisation’s Programme Officer Ms Patricia Simiyu confirms that they are sensitising the kids on issues of sexual violence including defilement prevention and response mechanisms.
“We have trained police officers and we are back to train the children so that they can also be champions in the community in terms of reporting and learning how to prevent defilement cases among themselves and be agents of sensitisation in the community,” she says.
Through pictorials that are relevant for their age, the learners are also trained on how to check on each other and identify signs of defilement among their peers to assist in reporting such cases.
“The children need to understand the signs to look out for in their peers and how they can reach out to the teachers because we have trained the teachers to help us in reporting these cases. We needed to also build the children’s confidence around reporting these cases,” she explains.
Changes in children can be in personal appearance, signs of withdrawal or engaging in activities that would otherwise be unusual for those close to them.
The officer reiterates they wanted to use the project to also sensitise the community at large to ensure the minors gain full support from all sectors.
Unlike other similar programmes, the 160 Girls Project is not a girls-only initiative, it has boys on board too. It addresses the boy-child since they are also vulnerable to defilement through sodomy.
Ms Simiyu notes they have a topic named ‘Boys are survivors’, which she says is a unique part of the project because the male gender has not been featured in any other programme.
“We want them to know that just like girls, boys are increasingly defiled and so they should understand that they can also fall prey to sexual maniacs,” she says.
Here, the boys are trained so that they too can be agents of sensitisation in schools and other informal set-ups.
These boys and girls are further enlightened on the importance of supporting victims of defilement both male and female, where to report such cases to and the steps to follow while seeking justice.
“We teach them that there are certain support systems within the court that they can go to and be assisted. We also teach them that sometimes the system we have may not be sufficient, but it does not mean there are no other avenues that can support them,” she notes.
Ms Simiyu states that they train learners on the different units available for support and response purposes as they also get to understand the consequences of obstructing justice and the harm in settling such cases privately.
“Learners need to know that they may sometimes be failed by the school system where teachers themselves may become perpetrators of defilement and even the police,” the Programme Officer says.
The organisation is working with the children department, Community Aids Transformation Alliance Group (CATAG) and the police to ensure that there is no obstruction of justice for survivors.
Other strategies employed by the Equality Effect is a weekly distribution of newsletters in the community, relayed in a simple language, both English and Kiswahili that any child can understand to strengthen its sensitisation resolve.
The newsletters are distributed to schools, local churches in a bid to also enlighten members of the public on the project as well as equality laws.
However, this is the second phase of the programme after the first phase which encompassed an average of 227 students in Homa Bay.
The County Director of Children Service Peter Kutere lauds this approach by the Equality Effect organisation saying that training children and parents will build a strong support for the learners when it comes to defilement.
“Am fascinated by the kind of approach the partner is implementing where they train both children and parents,” notes Kutere.
“Teaching children on how to use the tablets to access information is a very good initiative because it will improve their computer skills,” he adds.
The children department is also working towards formulating a child protection policy to spearhead the fight against defilement.
While speaking to KNA, both the head boy and head girl representing boys and girls from Wahambla Primary School, Clinton Odhiambo and Mitchell Awuor respectively, echoed that they are now confident and knowledgeable enough to fight for themselves and others.
“I have also learnt how to preserve evidence of defilement which is critical while reporting such cases to the police all thanks to the 160 Girls Project,” she says.
According to the latest reports by Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), Homa Bay is at 54 per cent in terms of SGBV.
By Sitna Omar
