Mobilising Men to Challenge Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Institutional Setting

Funder: This project was funded by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

Target Group: In Kenya, this project directly targeted female and male students from JKUAT and the boda boda operators who were operating around the JKUAT main campus in Juja constituency, Kiambu County at the time.

Regions: South Asia, East Africa

About the Project

Mobilising Men has been the work of many people. The programme was originally conceived at the seminal ‘Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal’ symposium, convened by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Dakar, Senegal in October 2007 and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). With guidance from IDS Programme Manager Alan Greig and IDS Research Fellow Jerker Edström, Mobilising Men was developed in collaboration with its country-level partners in India (Centre for Health and Social Justice), Kenya (Men for Gender Equality Now) and Uganda (Refugee Law Project).

The project began in late 2009 with country-level assessments and was later implimented in India, Kenya and Uganda since early 2010.  In Kenya, Men for Gender Equality Now (MEGEN)currently Advocates for Social Change- Kenya (ADSOCK) was the lead partner for the Mobilising Men programme. The Mobilising Men project targeted issues of SGBV in the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT)main campus and within the transport sector, particularly the boda boda operators who ferry students to and from the campus.

The project was aimed at achieving three main outcome(s) namely:

1. To create a pool of activists with deepened capacity to promote and sustain change in institutional policies and cultures that enact and enable SGBV;
2. To increase pressure within targeted sectors to change institutional policies & cultures on the basis of successful models of change in the programme sites; and
3. To create greater capacity within the ‘Men and Gender Equality’ field in the use of effective tools and processes for mobilising men to challenge institutional forms of SGBV.

A team of twenty male activists were recruited from the Student Union and the faculty of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), and another from two workers’ associations of bicycle taxi riders (the Boda Boda riders) who service the students and staff in and around the university, with an aim of creating a pool of male champions to work on SGBV prevention and promote gender justice in the institution and in the neighboring community.