Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

comprehensive series of guides such as Amnesty International’s Activists’ Toolkit that
is part of its Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.
Kits can also be a set of print media (posters, flash cards, booklets) and other materials
in a folder or a specially designed bag. Design the kit so that it appeals to its main users.
The "change maker" kit for WE CAN activists in South Asia includes a distinctive bag
filled with campaign booklets and mini-posters that can be used in small group
discussions. Local campaign alliances contribute T-shirts and caps with the campaign
logo to complement the kit. See the campaign’s tools for change makers.
When to work with activists’ kits?
- If the campaign has a relatively long time-frame (of multiple years) and/or
mobilization of large numbers of activists is part of its strategy.
- If sufficient resources are available, including time to develop and pre-test the kit,
and then produce and distribute it in sufficient numbers. In a campaign for behaviourchange,
activists’ kits targeting a non-specialized audience need to be developed
and pre-tested with a broad range of potential activists. Depending on context and
resources, that process could take up to a year or more.
Examples for high quality Activists’ Kits:
SASA! is a Kiswahili word meaning “Now”. It is a comprehensive, user-friendly program
tool for organizations that aim at mobilizing communities to prevent violence against
women and HIV infection. SASA! (by Raising Voices, Uganda) includes practical
resources, activities and monitoring and assessment tools for local activism, media and
advocacy, communication materials and training that organizations working on violence
or HIV/AIDS can use to incorporate these cross-cutting issues into their work. See
Raising Voices comprehensive kit for community activists providing guidance for
strategies, activities, monitoring and evaluation.
The We Can campaign South Asia, aims to trigger a person-to-person chain reaction
of change in attitudes and behaviour on a scale sufficient to generate a mass social
movement to end VAW (Aldred, Williams, 2009. We Can: The Story So Far). It focuses
on community awareness raising and mobilization through so-called change makers,
who work with a set of activist tools (“change maker tools”) that can be downloaded from
the campaign website and from the Thoughtshop Foundation which designed them, in
English, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu.
In preparation for the 3rd World Congress against Sexual Exploitation of Children
and Adolescents (November 2008 in Rio de Janeiro), the organizers created an
information kit for children and adolescents planning to participate in the Congress.
Participatory games
Games that can be played individually or in groups using electronic devices, picture
cards, workbooks, boards printed on sturdy material and simple game accessories (e.g.
dice) can be a simple, but effective community engagement tool. Games may be
invented, or adapted from existing popular activities. Typically they are played in groups
of 3-10 people and facilitated by a trained person to stimulate open discussions and
debates in a relaxed atmosphere. Engaging with an issue in this way can help highlight
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Campaigns December 2011