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Direct Services: Medical and medico-legal check up, counseling,
legal assistance, temporary shelter and livelihood referral.
Direct Action: Direct interventions consist of: stopping ongoing
violence, prevention of further violence, mediation at the barangay level,
temporary shelter at a volunteer’s house, police blotter, documentation.
Training: The network also provides training to groups willing to
replicate the efforts. Basic training usually includes: basic gender
sensitivity, framework and concepts of violence against women, laws
and processes affecting women, crisis intervention and counseling, family
dialogues, special laws on rape, sexual harassment, child abuse,
identification of sexual abuse, VAW in relation to housing, health, and
other issues.
Advocacy and Media Work: Bantay Banay is also involved in
supporting the passage of legislation affecting women. In court hearings,
it mobilizes members to attend and give moral support to victims. It also
calls media attention to possible lapses or delays in procedures.
Between 1995 and 1997, Bantay Banay recruited and trained 5,000
community and agency representatives in dealing with violence against
women, which includes: immediately stopping violence, counseling,
referrals for medical and medico-legal services, shelter and food, training
for alternative livelihood and legal assistance.
Different stakeholders together have so far responded to a total
of around 13,000 cases. This program has contributed greatly to
making domestic violence a public and governance issue in the
country. It is a model for community based and multi-stakeholder
approach for addressing the problem of domestic and other genderbased
violence.
The program, through its partner organizations, took the lead in
advocating the implementation of the 5% gender and development
budget as mandated by law. Over the years, the program’s advocacy
and efforts resulted in the following policy legislation:
a. Creation of a women’s desk in Cebu City police stations;
b. Formation of the Cebu City Women and Family Affairs
Commission; and
c. Passage of a Gender and Development Code, along with various
ordinances protecting women from violence and harassment.
On the whole, program efforts resulted to the following major
achievements:
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