From training 500 ECD teachers as first responders, to building a culture of accountability in higher education institutions, to hosting moot courts to teach youth about the legal responses to GBVF. The End GBVF 100-Day Challenges are driving rapid, results-oriented action within three critical ecosystems: courts, municipalities, higher education institutions. With over 200 End GBVF 100-Day Challenges planned for 2025, this initiative is rapidly expanding as one of the country’s largest and most action-oriented movements to end GBVF.

“Youth engagement isn’t about campaigns or one-day events – it’s a commitment to show up and respond. What’s been powerful to see through the 100-Day Challenge teams is how they’re showing up consistently in the spaces where young people spend most of their time such as preschools, classrooms and college campuses.” says Nomgqibelo Mdlalose, Movement Navigator for the End GBVF 100-Day Challenges.

GBV Interventions must start in the earliest school years

In the Drakenstein Municipality in the Western Cape, an ambitious effort is underway to train 500 Early Childhood Development (ECD) teachers as GBVF first responders. Over the next 100 days, 15 preschools will become part of a network of care where teachers are trained to identify early signs of abuse and respond in trauma-sensitive ways. The importance of this work lies in its timing – these are the years when children first learn what safety feels like, when trust is built, or broken. And because many survivors never disclose what happened to them as children, interventions at this stage could be life-altering.

“GBVF prevention starts with the relationships and environments that shape how young people understand harm and support avenues,” adds Mdlalose.

Building a culture of accountability in higher education institutions

In the post-school education sector, colleges like Taletso TVET in Mahikeng are building a culture of accountability and legal literacy through hands-on workshops in partnership with the National Prosecuting Authority. With hundreds of GBVF-related misconduct cases reported in higher education over recent years, there’s a pressing need to stop normalising harmful behaviour on campus. Taletso’s recent sessions have unpacked the Sexual Offenses Act, the Domestic Violence Act, and other laws – not as theory, but as tools that young people can use to navigate power dynamics, report abuse and understand their rights.

These legal education sessions are exciting because they don’t just deliver information, but they also change the atmosphere. This is especially important in vocational spaces like TVETs, where many students are away from home for the first time, facing economic and social pressures that can silence or isolate survivors.

In other TVET institutions across the country, the 100-Day Challenge teams are also focusing on three key areas: 1) breaking the silence by encouraging more survivors to report their experiences of GBVF; 2) healing the wounds by ensuring that those who do come forward receive high-quality care, counselling and support; 3) and creating deterrence by ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable through both disciplinary processes and the courts. These interventions recognise the complex realities many students face and aim to build TVET campuses that are places of safety, response and care.

Practical insight into the justice system

In Limpopo, previous 100-Day Challenge teams have taken this even further by hosting Moot Court sessions for high school learners. In these sessions, students witness how sexual offence cases are conducted and what minimum sentences apply when someone is found guilty of rape. It is one thing to teach young people that violence is wrong, but it is another to show them, step by step, how justice unfolds. This kind of learning makes the law tangible, and it plants the idea that fairness is not abstract or unreachable, but something that can and must be demanded.

Each of these frontline projects, whether led in a college, court or municipality tells a story of what becomes possible when young people are actively involved in efforts to address GBVF. They matter because they meet young people where they are, while offering a model for what a community-led, responsive GBVF strategy can look like when prevention, support and accountability are treated not as separate tasks, but as parts of a unified whole.

This Youth Month, the message from these 100-Day Challenge teams is clear: if we want to end GBVF, we cannot wait until violence has already happened. We must start in the spaces where young people are learning, growing, and forming their first ideas of justice.