Overview of Communities Care
(CC) Project
• Partnership with UNICEF-HQ to develop, implement and
evaluation GBV primary prevention & response
intervention in humanitarian context (South Sudan and
Somalia).
• Focus on strengthening positive social norms that protect
women & girls from violence & leveraging societal
dynamics to change social norms that serve to hide or
actually encourage GBV.
Overview of Communities Care
(CC) Project
• The social norms perspective promotes the establishment
of self-sustaining social rules that are upheld by social
rewards & punishment.
• Emphasis placed on strengthening health, psychosocial,
education, security & justice systems for the provision of
community-based care & support.
• Positive messages spread throughout the community as
services improve & are made available, reinforcing the
positive outcomes.
Strategic Approach
• An intervention toolkit for use across
humanitarian settings to guide: i) primary
prevention efforts that target social norms
related to diverse forms of GBV, & ii)
comprehensive community-based multi-sectoral
response to GBV.
• Strengthened policies & practices in education &
peace-building, child protection, health, and legal
response in humanitarian contexts.
Overall Programme Strategy
Multi-sectoral:
• Health
• Psychosocial
• Education
• Police
• Justice
• Peacebuilding
Strengthening of
formal & informal
community-based
multi-sectoral
response services,
through addressing
social norms
reflected by service
providers and
institutions
Community
engagement &
action for
prevention using a
social norms
perspective
Reduced victimization & perpetration of
GBV & greater access & use of survivorcentered multi-sectoral services
Key activities:
Strengthening of
formal & informal
community-based
multi-sectoral
response services,
addressing social
norms reflected by
service providers and
institutions
–On-going mapping of multi-sector
services to address gaps &
bottlenecks
– Process and Impact evaluation
with ongoing M&E
–Capacity development, & on-going
mentoring & supervision of health,
psychosocial, education, police,
justice, peacebuilding sector actors
in order to:
 Ensure referral mechanisms
are in place
 Address social norms to
reinforce survivor-centered
care
 Address availability & access
 Improve safety & security
associated with
reporting/disclosing GBV
 Promote understanding of the
benefits of care, &
 Build the community’s trust
in service providers
Key activities:
Community
engagement &
action for
prevention using
social norms
perspective
• Mapping of opinion
leaders/networks & ways to
transmit messages
• Community
discussion/deliberation groups
with diverse stakeholders
• Identification of & capacity
development/mentoring of
community discussion leaders to
ensure that they can support
communities in:
 Addressing issues that reinforce
GBV & identify positive
community actions that prevent
GBV
 Identifying & supporting
individual & collective actions in
favor of GBV prevention
Phase 1: Development of Social Norms
Outcomes Measure
• Qualitative methods (e.g. in-depth
interviews/focus groups) with diverse
stakeholders to examine social norms that
prevent and sustain GBV in households and
community
• Interviews/focus group transcripts were
analyzed for common themes and items were
written to reflect those themes
• Themes, items and measure was
discussed/revised with in-country partners to
finalize for study
Phase 2: Psychometric Testing of Outcomes
Measure
• Reliability (answer items consistently) and validity
(items go together as expected) of the measure was
tested using factor analysis, internal consistencies
reliability, and tests of hypothesized differences
across groups
• The analyses focused on refinement of the measure
and establish the psychometric properties prior to
baseline data collection for the impact evaluation
Phase 2: Social Norms Measure
• Brief, but reliable and valid social norms measure to
be administered in both countries
• Measure has 18 items that ask questions in 4
domains/subscales, which were descriptively named:
1. Sexual Violence/GBV
2. Family Honour
3. Gender Equality
4. Husband’s Rights
Social Norms Measure
•The final measure includes 18 items – each
item asked from three perspectives:
• Influencial others - What do you think
people who are important to you expect you
to do?
• Personal beliefs related to norms
• What is happening in their community
related to norms
Measure Subscale: Family Honor
What do you think people who are important to you
expect you to do?
1. expect women and girls to only report sexual
violence if they have serious physical injuries
2. expect a husband or father to retaliate against
the alleged perpetrators
3. expect that a woman/girl's reputation will be
damaged, if she reports sexual violence to the
authorities or elders
Measure Subscale: Family Honor
What do you think people who are important to
you expect you to do?
4. expect women/girls to not report rape to
protect the family dignity
5. expect sexual violence to be handled within
the family and not reported to authorities
6. fear stigma if they were to report sexual
violence
• Responses on Likert scale from 1-5 (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly
agree), with higher scores indicate that participants think more of the
people who are important/influencial to them endorse protecting
family honor
Phase 3: Impact Evaluation
• Evaluate Communities Care (CC) intervention for
utilization in humanitarian settings - Somalia and
South Sudan
• Evidence of success of CC programme before scaleup to other countries/humanitarian settings
• Primary outcome: change in social norms towards
sexual violence and other forms of GBV
Phase 3: Impact Evaluation
RCT with 2 intervention and 2 delayed control
communities in each country.
Longitudinal design (baseline, midline, endline) with
assessments:
o800 adult women/men from randomly selected households
in intervention and delayed control communities in both
countries
oIntervention group participants (15 week intervention) –
Example from Somalia
oMulti-sector Service providers
oSatisfaction of care for women who access health care
services – specific questions with women who seek health
services related to GBV
Shifting Personal Beliefs –
Shifting Social Norms (Somalia)
A young women is raped when she is alone after school. She knows
the man who raped her- he is a friend of her father. He stopped by
the house looking for her father, but when he realized she was alone,
he attacked her.
Statements
Before Discussion
Group N=80
Not
Agree sure Disagree
The girl should not
report the rape to her
family
46.3% 0.0% 53.8%
The girls should not
report the rape to the
authorities
12.5% 1.3% 86.3%
The girl probably did
something that
encouraged the man
to have sex with her 26.3% 15.0% 58.8%
After 2 Months
N=76
Not
Agree sure Disagree
After 4 Month
N=81
Not
Agree sure Disagree
13.2% 3.9%
82.9%
3.7% 3.7% 92.6%
6.6% 3.9%
89.5%
2.5% 3.7% 93.8%
11.8% 7.9%
80.3%
4.9% 2.5% 92.6%
Your sister-in-law comes to talk with you about troubles with her
husband, your younger brother. She says that her husband is
coming home late at night, and that when he gets home he often is
angry and aggressive, demanding to have sexual relations. If she
refuses his demand, he beats her. She also tells you that the
children see the violence.
Statements
Before the Discussions
N=80
After 2 Months
N=76
After 4 Months
N=81
Not
Agree sure Disagree
Not
Agree sure Disagree
Not
Agree sure Disagree
69.1%
9.2% 2.6%
88.2%
2.5% 3.7% 93.8%
17.5%
27.6% 10.5%
61.8%
9.9% 9.9% 80.2%
22.5%
35.1% 2.7%
62.2%
14.8% 8.6% 76.5%
The man is showing
his love for his wife 27.2% 3.7%
The man has a right
to demand sex from
his wife.
81.3% 1.3%
It is most important
for the women to
take care of her
husband and home. 75.0% 2.5%
A 14 years old is raped by a group of older boys on her way to school.
She heard the boys telling each other they were real men now. She
feels humiliated and believes that she has dishonored her family. She
will not tell her parents because of the shame. she believes that if
anyone finds out what happened to her, no man will love her and her
future will be destroyed.
Before the Discussion
After 2 Months
Group N=80
N=68
Not
Not
Agree sure Disagree Agree sure Disagree
Statements
The boys can't be
blamed for behaving
like this- boys do
these things when
they are together.
15.0%
The girl should not
tell anyone to
protect her honor.
21.0%
The girl should tell
her parents and
marry one of the
boys
65.0%
After 4 Months
N=81
Not
Agree sure Disagree
0.0% 85.0%
5.2% 3.9% 90.9%
2.5% 6.2% 91.4%
7.4% 71.6%
7.8% 7.8% 84.4%
2.5% 4.9% 92.6%
7.5% 27.5%
22.1% 11.7% 66.2%
7.4% 8.6% 84.0%
Benefits/Challenges in the
Humanitarian Context
•Changing context– internally displaced persons
(IDPs), family structures, roles/decision making by
women/girls in household and community,
increase in GBV awareness and services/programs
•Capacity/ownership by community and
implementing partners
•Priority of safety/security for community and
implementing partners – ex. Gatekeepers in IDP
camps in Mogadishu.