The sexual violence and abuse tend to increase in both rural and urban areas among women, girls and students of high schools, specifically among poor women with manual job. The main reason is lack of knowledge about gender equality, gender-based sex violence, and the victim’s stigma and lack of voice on violent acts leading to an increase in sexual violence. This is a major social problem which needs support and action from national and local communities.
From August 2020 to March 2021, with funding from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) of the Embassy of Canada in Vietnam, the Centre for Social Research Development (CSRD) will implementation the project “Preventing forms of sexual violence against women, boys and girls in Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam”.
The total project budget is 528,129,000 VND (Five hundred twenty eight million one hundred twenty nine thousand Vietnamdong) to be distributed for implementation within 8 months. This is the first project supported by CFLI Vietnam for Hue City, Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam focusing on prevention of gender-based sex violence in terms of women in community and sex abuse among high school students.
The activities of the project will focus on the providing and strengthening the knowledge and skills for women, girl students and the community to prevent sexual violence and abuse, especially in the rural and remote areas. The top priority will be given to provide women and girls knowledge and skills on gender equality, sexual violence and solutions for protecting themselves. The main target audience for the project will be women in manual labor in Thua Thien Hue province who have low education levels and limited access to information on sexual violence. Besides, schoolgirls studying in high schools in Thua Thien Hue province will also be the main object of the project. More activities as awareness training activities, expert conversations, contests on related topics, community communication, … will be held regularly throughout the project.
In addition, the project mobilizes different stakeholders in the community, using many different tools about communication are to make sure that targeted women and girls of high schools as well as community can access information. Roughly 620 people directly benefit form the project including women, boys and girls. In addition, it is expected that the number of indirect beneficiaries will be consisted of wide public audience such as parents, other school students in province or nationwide will be able to access project information and communication materials through different channels such as website, facebook, mass media and network.
Through the project, CSRD will maintain the relationship with beneficiaries to track the changes in their awareness and action. It will encourage local high schools and Women Union to integrate this issue into their annual agenda. On the other hand, CSRD will mobilize provincial relevant agencies to engage in the project activities to ensure that projects’ beneficiaries will be connected for support in the future.