Programmes

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Current Programmes

Counselling

Counselling survivors is the foundation of Masisukumeni Women’s Crisis Centre. As an essential service a team of trained lay counsellors counsel individual survivors or rape, sexual assault and domestic violence. Statistics show that Masisukumeni counsels an average of 1500 individuals per annum.

  • Counselling is provided at the central office and larger primary health care clinics in the surrounding villages. Counselling involves addressing the psychological and physical effects of gender violence, providing medico legal information, informing survivors of their human and legal rights and providing information on HIV/AIDS. In addition where individuals wish to report their cases to the police and the courts counsellors accompany them and provide support in the process.
  • An additional achievement in service delivery is the presence of Masisukumeni counsellors during forensic examination of rape survivors at local hospitals. The counsellor provides support during this procedure and assists survivors in understanding the terms of post exposure prophylactic treatment against HIV infection. Masisukumeni counsellors are on call 24 hours a day for accompanying survivors to the local hospitals for forensic examination and post exposure prophylactic treatment. They assist the police by ensuring that the sexual assault kit is used and J88 documents are completed by examining doctors.
  • Masisukumeni hopes to raise funds to expand its counselling service by employing a full-time psychologist. Currently the Nkomazi district with a population of over 300 000 people only has one psychologist employed at a local hospital.

Community Based Public Education

Masisukumeni runs community based public education programmes with the aim of upholding women’s and children’s legal and human rights and preventing gender based violence. Statistics show that over 5 000 people per annum are exposed to public education through this programme. This programme is made up of 2 strategic interventions.

The first strategic intervention aims at general information giving and awareness raising to inform people of the effects of gender related violence, HIV/AIDS, and reproductive health, and to inform them of their rights and how to get help to pursue their rights. The work done to achieve this aim includes:

  • Masisukumeni counsellors make presentations to groups of patients waiting to see sisters and doctors at the clinics.
  • Evidence suggests a high incidence of gender specific violence within schools. With the aim of involving youth in prevention, groups of school pupils and teachers are trained in the social and legal issues related to gender violence and HIV/AIDS. These pupils and teachers then do awareness raising with their peers. The school education programme involves frequent co-operation with members of the department of health and the police who are invited to make presentations to students.
  • Community based workshops are conducted with small groups allowing for more in depth discussion of gender based violence, HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Out of this work a cadre of committed volunteers has emerged who refer to Masisukumeni and do awareness raising within their own communities.
  • Counsellors do general advocacy when they are invited to speak at community meetings and other organisation’s meetings.

The second strategic intervention involves more in depth group work aimed at attitude and behaviour change. Based on statistic gathered by Masisukumeni and evaluation of its projects this work is an expansion of the existing projects. The work done to achieve this aim includes:

  • Supervised ‘self writing’ in diaries and journals for female and male youth to raise self awareness and reflection on their attitudes to gender rights, sexuality, relationships and family. The youth meet in groups under the supervision of a trained facilitator to share their entries and discuss their attitudes and feelings.
  • Youth trained to educate youth. Young people male and female are being trained on gender, gender related violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV/AIDS and in how to conduct workshop. They are then supervised in running workshops with their peers.
  • Small group meeting with survivors of gender related violence to explore their feelings and changes in consciousness.

Reproductive Health and Rights

With the assistance of a grant and training from IPAS, Masisukumeni has integrated information on sexual and reproductive health and rights into its counselling and public education programmes. Staff and volunteers emphasise the importance of reaching larger numbers of people through community based interventions and via their presence at primary health care clinics.

Research conducted at clinics, the local hospital and a selection of schools reveals that there is very little available public information on sexual and reproductive health and rights. This combined with poverty leads to many women not using existing services or not being referred to existing services and instead seeking informal services which endanger their lives and health. Furthermore even those who do use the state services may not always be getting an optimal service in terms of counselling support and follow up because nurses and doctors are either stretched for time and resources or because they are themselves not equipped to provide support and follow up.

The community based workshops, the school workshops and counselling with individual women show that in general there are glaring gaps in women’s and girls’ knowledge and understanding of their reproductive and sexual health and rights. Women are pressurized by families and partners and therefore do not feel free to make choices about contraception. There are large numbers of young girls at school who find themselves with unplanned pregnancies and little information on where to get help or support. Furthermore there are even more young girls for whom their first experience of sex is coerced and have little sense of their sexual rights. Finally it is evident that the state services are under-resourced, specifically with regard to advice on contraception and sexual rights. These findings confirms that promoting and upholding rural women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights is an essential intervention and enhances the struggle to combat gender related violence and promote gender equality.

Masisukumeni has been involved in two forms of intervention in relation to reproductive health and sexual rights:

  1. Information and advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and rights through education at primary health care clinics, community based workshops, public education at schools and during home visits when counsellors follow up clients seen at clinics, the hospitals and the police stations;
  2. Work which allows for transformation of attitudes through in depth group work with youth in small groups. The participants will be encouraged to keep journals/diaries on their experiences, feelings and ideas about sexual and reproductive rights and health.

The objectives of the reproductive health and rights projects are as follows:

  1. To promote and uphold women’s and youth’s sexual and reproductive health and rights;
  2. To disseminate information and material on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights at a grass roots level in public education programmes at schools, clinics, home visits and community based workshops;
  3. To engage girls and boys in small group work activities which allows for reflection of experiences and feelings with the objective of transforming attitudes and behaviours in relation to sex, contraception, and reproductive health and sexual rights.

The activities of the reproductive health and rights project include the following:

  1. Masisukumeni staff and volunteers disseminate information and advocate on sexual and reproductive health and rights in their awareness raising and public education programmes at primary health care clinics, schools, community based workshops, and home visits that they do in the course of their work;
  2. Two Masisukumeni counsellors set up two groups of youth – one group of 12 boys and one group of 12 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 years and create a safe space for these young people to reflect on their bodies, sexuality, gender, sex, contraception, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The participants are invited to keep journals/diaries of their reflections and to use the space to read from and discuss their journal/diary entries. The children are invited and encouraged to write a brief report on their experience of working in a group at the end of the process.
  3. It should be noted that information on reproductive health and rights will continue to be provided in individual counselling sessions.

Para Legal Assistance

Two fully trained para-legal officers are employed full time by Masisukumeni. Their principal role is to assist survivors in reporting to the police and courts and to monitor the progress of cases once they have been reported. The objective of this monitoring is to improve case management by the police and criminal justice systems and thereby increase rates of conviction. They meet with the public prosecutor, police and clerk of the court at the Magistrates court on a weekly basis to go through all cases of rape, domestic violence and child abuse. Additionally the para-legal officers co-ordinates pre-court training and orientation for children who are going to appear in court as witnesses in cases of sexual abuse and assault, once again, with the intention of improving conviction rates. Thus in addition to monitoring the implementation of laws the work done by the para-legal officers complements the counselling service.

Further to these functions the para- legal officer assists members of the community, on a walk in basis, with a range of problems including maintenance claims, applications for social grants, identity documents, workmen’s compensation and informing people of their legal and human rights.

Research

Masisukumeni has also been involved in research activities. Over a period of two years from 2003 to 2005 a study was conducted on men’s changing practices in their intimate relationships post apartheid and the emergence of the gender rights project. Dr. Tina Sideris co-ordinated this project whilst a postdoctoral research fellow at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research). Apart from several publications in academic journals and books, this research project generated two 24-minute documentary films, A Few Good Men and Echoes of Childhood which will be distributed to NGO’s and CBO’s in the gender based violence sector who are working with men. While Dr. T. Sideris is no longer at WISER she continues to assist with facilitating research and networking with researchers so that Masisukumeni staff can receive training. Masisukumeni have had the privilege of attending research training conducted by researchers and the Danish Research and Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims. This training involved tracking people’s help seeking strategies, and through interviews and analysing journals developing an understanding people’s conceptualisation of suffering. In addition Masisukumeni maintains a computer based data base. With the assistance of a grant from Amnesty International staff were trained in the use of statistics. Masisukumeni staff also assisted Amnesty International researchers to interview people living with HIV for their investigation of human rights abuses experienced by people living with HIV.