Team News and Updates

In August 17, at the Taletso TVET College’s Lehurutshe Campus, Ambassadors4Change joined the End Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) Collective along with other stakeholders from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Department of Social Development (DSD), the South African Police Service (SAPS), and other renowned non-governmental organizations to raise awareness and come up with practical solutions to address pressing problems and create a safe environment for the students within the campus community.

The event not only featured enlightening conversations, interactive workshops, and presentations from professionals in the field but served as the first day of the End GBVF 100-days campaign. The End GBVF Collective is one of 1,200 delegates to the South African Presidential Summit against GBVF.

They have accepted the challenge of executing the GBVF National Strategic Plan (NSP) through the 100-day difficulties, which began in 2022 and are backed by the Ford Foundation.

“The success of last year’s 100-day challenges have inspired us to scale the 100-Day Challenges on a regional and local level for 2023, as a result of the noted remarkable outcomes, which included an extraordinary level of collaboration among the participating organizations,” said Sixolile Ngcobo from the End GBVF Collective.

Each 100-Day Challenge seeks to significantly improve one or more of these types of impact areas following the NSP pillars: access, speed, and quality of resolution of the various GBVF-related court cases, prevention in the workplace and schools, integrated crisis response, and post-crisis integrated care.

Their strategy is built around a focus on regional communities. Real change begins at the local level. Hence the End GBVF Collective focuses on local governments, schools, police departments, and community-based organizations.

The Collective aims to establish a network of change agents that can work together to demolish the institutions that support GBVF by giving these important people more power. This year, Ambassadors4Change is one of the non-governmental organizations that has collaborated in this campaign and plans to participate as one of the End GBVF 100-days challenge implementing stakeholders. Ambassadors4Change is a well-known non-governmental organization dedicated to pushing for gender equality and combating violence against women.

“Collectively, we are responsible for acting together and bringing GBVF to a zero. Now is the time,” said Gathel Moyo, Ambassadors4Change Coordinator.

Its goal and objective in participating in the 100-day challenge is to establish a safe environment where students may feel comfortable talking to others and feeling safe both inside and outside the campus. It also aims to increase the number of reported instances while concurrently reducing GBVF cases.

“Being part of the End GBVF 100-days challenges for us means that we get to do more collectively with other organizations that strive to end GBVF, as one of our objectives is to raise awareness around GBVF and to create visibility around issues involving GBVF. So, this gives us an opportunity and the platform to be active within our community and spread the word as far as possible provincially and nationally,” said Moyo.

The End GBVF Collective is collaborating with DHET and Ambassadors4Change, among others, to put forth a message of joining forces to halt GBVF one day at a time for the 100-day challenge and any other day.