PROJECT EMPOWER

Since our inception in 2002, Project Empower has worked with more than 100 community-based groups across the KZN province and also in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo to develop and implement interventions that prevent HIV and violence against women. This work was supported by Oxfam Australia, Oxfam in South Africa and NOVIB amongst other donors.

Our work has also supported the formation of community-based activist women’s groups who have advocated for the realisation of their rights.. Eight women’s groups in eThekwini informal settlements and a further six in the rural community of Ndumo ensured that women’s health care needs were adequately addressed at primary health care clinics, that community policing forums addressed violence against women, and that women and their interests were represented on ward committees. This work was supported by Oxfam in South Africa, by the Canadian International Development Fund, and by the Joint Gender Fund.

From 2011 to 2013, Project Empower partnered with UKZN and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) to prevent violence against women and strengthening youth livelihoods in informal settlements. Together we developed Creating Futures, a livelihoods curriculum which we tested with young people alongside the existing gender transformative curriculum, Stepping Stones.

In 2015, Project Empower was a co-recipient of a DIFD grant via the SAMRC aimed at identifying interventions that are successful in preventing violence against women. As part of this grant, Project Empower implemented Stepping Stones Creating Futuresas part of a randomised control trial involving 1 340 participants in 34 informal settlements across eThekwini. This intervention was found to be effective in strengthening men and women’s livelihoods and reducing men’s perpetration of violence against women.

In 2017, Project Empower was contracted by FHI360 to deliver a community mobilization and post violence care programme using Stepping Stones as part of the broader DREAMS initiative aimed at preventing HIV acquisition and GBV amongst adolescent girls and young women and over a three year period trained over 15 000 individuals across eThekwini.

Governing Board And Staff Members:

• The organisation is governed by an Advisory Board which meets three times a year.
• Project Empower employs a core team consisting of: Director, Programmes Manager, Community Coordinators and finance and administrative staff.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

A social system of class, race and gender inequalities exists and must be challenged in South Africa and globally. This system is reproduced in the home, the community and in society broadly by processes of socialisation, by the media, by culture and by religion. In this system, communities are fragmented, stigma and discrimination against all minorities is rife, and relationships are unsupportive and even destructive. This system results in young, poor, black women experiencing material deprivation and dependence, violence, rape and HIV infection.

VISION STATEMENT

What are we working towards? We are working towards a society that is safe, secure, free, equal and sustainable for all, without race, class, gender, HIV status and other forms of discrimination, where power is shared, solidarity is the norm, and the state is responsive to the needs of women and all people (ensuring equal access to health care, water and sanitation, food and shelter) and is committed to the upholding and protection of women’s and all human rights.

MISSION STATEMENT

Through a range of interventions, Project Empower raises consciousness about the impact of class, race and gender oppression on women’s lives, develops leaders, identifies allies, and works with women at community level to create change that results in communities where girls, women and all people can live healthily, safely and in freedom. Key areas of work include: Women’s rights issues, women’s empowerment, HIV and AIDS, VAW, increasing voices and participation.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

• To develop and test a range of initiatives aimed at reducing HIV and violence against girls and women;
• To work with community structures to ensure that girls and women are protected;
• To enable women in communities to organise and take action to ensure their wellbeing.

QUALITY CONTROL MECHANISMS

As part of project inception, a quality assessment is developed, using the quality matrix system. Key quality indicators are identified, monitoring measures identified and risk indicators are monitored monthly.

CURRENT IMPLEMENTATIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS

Project Empower has a current contract with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI). This 18 month grant enables us to work with young women from informal settlements to deepen our understanding of their agency in preventing violence in their intimate partnerships, and to work with young women to develop a violence prevention curriculum.

We are also working in partnership with researchers from the South African Medical Research Council, the University of KwaZulu Natal, and the University College London on a 36 month project exploring contextual factors that shape HIV risk for young men and young women in South Africa.