Survivors Leadership Initiative

About the Initiative

SLI is aimed at strengthening individual and institutional capacities of Survivor-led end FGM/C work at organisations and individual level. It promotes a local-led approach by the survivors of FGM/C, by strengthening their capacities to lead in ensuring their own emotional wellbeing and that of other survivors, training them on leadership, strengthening survivors, support networks, improving their engagement with the media and enhancing their advocacy skills. SLI’s objective include: 

  • Promoting sustainable psychosocial and emotional support for women and girls affected by FGM/C.
  • Promoting self-care for survivors working to end FGM/C especially at grassroot levels, and their capacity to reach out to other survivors with support on wellbeing. 
  • Breaking down the stigma associated with FGM/C, emotional and mental health issues. 

Community Implentation Workstream

The Community Implementation workstream is dedicated to partnering with communities to accelerate progress towards ending FGM/C through evidence-based, targeted interventions.

Guided by the socio-ecological model, our efforts are organized into four interconnected levels:

  • Empowering and expanding opportunities for girls’ agency and strengthening girl-centred interventions: We focus on enhancing girls' and boys' knowledge about rights and violence, including FGM/C, through a girl-centered curriculum. Our goal is to improve understanding, shift attitudes, and reduce the intention to practice FGM/C.
  • Facilitating locally-led norm shifting community conversations and dialogues: We support locally-led conversations on FGM/C, including inter-generational and gender dialogues, facilitated by trained community champions. These discussions aim to build consensus and reduce the intention to cut future daughters while strengthening local movements against FGM/C.
  • Strengthening Networks: At the community and sub-national levels, we collaborate with women’s and youth networks to foster attitude changes and bolster local efforts to end FGM/C. This includes enhancing child protection mechanisms and holding duty bearers accountable.
  • Advocating Policy Change: Our final level engages communities and governments in creating and enforcing policies and legal frameworks to end FGM/C. We also focus on cross-border research and coordination. The aim is to strengthen key policies and ensure effective implementation.

Integration

Our Integration workstream addresses FGM/C by embedding prevention and response strategies into key development programs, such as health and education, to promote sustainable and effective change. This approach counters the limitations of treating FGM/C as a standalone issue by integrating it into broader frameworks that enhance the social, economic welfare and wellbeing of girls and women. The overall goal of integration is to ensure the next generation of medical/health professionals are knowledgeable, skilled and empowered towards acceleration of positive change in social attitudes towards ending FGM/C including its medicalization in TGG-ALM target countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal and Somaliland.

Key Focus Areas

Key Focus Areas: 

  1. Curriculum Development: We create standardized FGM/C prevention and response curricula for medical and health training programs at colleges and universities.
  2. Faculty Training: We train faculty members using this curriculum to ensure consistent education across universities and colleges
  3. Pre-Service Training: We support faculty in delivering FGM/C prevention and response education to medical, nursing, midwifery, and public health students in universities and colleges.
  4. Empowering Health Professionals: Our goal is to equip the next generation of health professionals with the knowledge and skills to combat FGM/C and manage related complications.
  5. Service Provision: We ensure that trained professionals provide FGM/C prevention and care services at health facilities and in communities.
  6. Access to Services: We work to guarantee that FGM/C prevention and care services are available at service delivery points and in the community, delivered by trained health workers and community health promoters.
  7. Best Practices: We focus on optimizing service delivery and evidence generation through the dissemination of best practices in FGM/C prevention and care.
  8. Knowledge Sharing: We enhance integration efforts through knowledge sharing and communication at professional conferences for healthcare providers.
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