Our Gender & Women’s Issues Program hosts projects that focus on gender dynamics, women’s rights, leadership, and empowerment dealing with a range of issues relevant to society at large, including children. These initiatives incorporate a focused gender lens and strive to improve the lives of women and/or youth. We tackle women’s leadership, empowerment, equality, and strengthen networks for dialogue on gender and women’s issues. Our Gender & Women’s Issues Program additionally incorporates peace building elements that intersect with gender issues and builds upon Sustainable Development Goal 5 to promote gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Our efforts in this area continually seek to leverage the potential of women leadership and participation while still recognizing the work that needs to be done to protect women and their rights.
Prevention of Violence Against Women (PVAW)
1 in 3 women across Cambodia suffer from violence against them and 49 percent of them do not seek help thinking that such violence is acceptable. Child marriage remains a concern with 4% to 6% girls married between the age of 15 and 17. PVAW seeks to reduce violent against women through raising awareness and challenging gender norm, increasing understanding of sexual reproductive health issues and rights, and strengthening a supportive and caring community intolerant of GBV. PVAW also equips participants with effective conflict transformation skills to address daily conflict nonviolently and empowers the participant to initially build a peaceful mind, then a peaceful family and community.
We work directly with women and men in the community, youth, Commune Committee for Women and Children, and local authority. We also work to address violence against women through promoting a gender sensitive mediation mechanism by working directly with the Commune Dispute Resolution Committee (CDRC) and promoting more women to serve in the CDRC. Our target areas are in all communes of Dambe District, Tbong Khmum Province.
Women Leadership Program
Over time, we’ve shifted from seeing women as primarily victims of violence to strong leaders for peace and real agents for change at all levels of society. We believe that women empower themselves and by mobilizing, they can intervene directly in community conflict, envision creative solutions, participate in and influence policy development, and transform relationships that may be stuck in deep protracted conflict.
With this in mind, WPM is working to fostering and linking like-minded women together from all corners of Cambodia to learn, share, and support each other and collaborate to build peace in diverse contexts and situations throughout the country. Our network of women peacebuilders is made up of leaders and aspiring leaders to take gender and conflict transformation principles and tools to their work and lives to bring change within themselves and those around them.
Send Girls to School
Research has shown that women without education suffer twice the violence than those receive education. In Cambodia context, risk of intimate partner violence against women will be reduced by almost 50 percent if a woman is educated at least until grade 7. Unfortunately, uneducated women and girls are among the poorest as education is costly. Send Girls to School is an initiative by our like-minded youth seeking to change the life of the girls in the rural areas of Cambodia who suffer from domestic violence, poverty, and other obstacles preventing her from achieving her full potential.Women Peace Makers is working in a remote community where education for girl is needed.
Through generous contribution of our like-minded individuals inside and outside the country, we manage to provide scholarship for girls to receive primary education, and engage with their family and community in order to support the development of an empowering, supportive and sustainable environment for girls to achieve her full potential.
Networking
Women Peace Makers is currently serving as a steering committee member of Gender and Development Network (GADNet) and a member of The Cambodian NGO Committee on the Convention to Eliminate of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (NGO- CEDAW). Together with our participants, we celebrate and join annual national and international campaigns to call for an end to violence against women and girls.
