Preventing School-Related Gender-Based Violence: Bleu Blanc Magazine [DRC]

Communication and training materials were developed for an intervention to prevent and mitigate school-related, gender-based violence (SRGBV) in Katanga Province, DRC. The materials included codes of conduct, a life skills curriculum for students, and a training curriculum for teachers, comic books for SRGBV youth clubs, findings from qualitative and quantitative research that provided the evidence for the intervention, and translated and adapted versions of USAID’s Doorways I and III Safe Schools curricula. The intervention was implemented in 31 schools.

The project aimed to equip girls and boys ages 10–14 to resist, avoid, and report incidences of SRGBV and receive supportive services. At the same time, the intervention built the ability of administrators, teachers, SRGBV focal persons in schools, and parents to identify and discourage SRGBV and intervene, if incidences occur. Healthy gender norms were also promoted.

The project teamed up with Bleu Blanc Magazine, a locally produced and self-funded publication, which is sold at minimal cost (700FC) through schools. The project distributed magazines with anti-GBV and health messages to students in school.

This special Kinshasa edition (#25) was sold to 60,000 students, many of whom in turn shared it with school friends, with an estimated final readership of half a million individuals. In addition to the GBV cover story, the back cover of the magazine depicts a malaria prevention messages on insecticide-treated bed-net utilization.

Source: FHI 360

Date of Publication: March 25, 2019