Spotlight Initiative

Social, cultural, and religious norms place women and girls at high risk of gender-based violence (GBV) and harmful practices. Between one-third and one-half of women experience violence in the provinces of Zimbabwe where World Education's Bantwana Initiative is implementing UNICEF’s Spotlight Initiative. Fewer than half the survivors of such violence seek help and they rarely turn to the police or social welfare organizations for support. In these hotspots, the Spotlight Initiative supports the Ministry of Public Service, Labour, and Social Welfare to provide critical access to timely clinical, psychosocial, and legal services for GBV survivors.

The Spotlight Initiative facilitates multi-sectoral coordination and promotes efficiency and accountability of GBV response through a GBV-sensitive National Case Management System, originally developed and supported by Bantwana (from 2012-2016). The project supports embedded and trained social workers and psychosocial support officers in district social welfare offices, who guide community childcare workers to link survivors of violence to comprehensive services and provide follow-up support.

To address gaps on the response side, Bantwana is training and incentivizing police and district social welfare officers to provide quality and timely services through an innovative results-based financing model. This model has proved highly effective at capacitating and motivating victim-friendly units to receive and respond quickly to GBV cases and ensure appropriate legal action as well as linkage to post-violence care. Bantwana has also introduced an emergency transport voucher mechanism to provide safe and timely transport for survivors of violence to protection services sites. With these models piloted and in place in five districts, Bantwana is expanding to an additional nine districts as of 2021 and introducing digital tools for remote support of case workers and psychosocial support officers.