Raising Voices and the rights of Women and children

Raising Voices has been in existence since 1999. We are a local NGO working on empowering the community to prevent violence against women and children. The organization engages people, communities and the nation generally on making violence against women and children socially unacceptable. Raising Voices started work on preventing violence against children formally in 2004. We began with extensive research on violence against children (VAC) in Uganda. VAC includes physical, sexual, emotional and economic violence.

Raising Voices is a nonprofit organization based in Kampala, Uganda working toward the prevention of violence against women and children. Our work strives to influence the power dynamics shaping  relationships between women and men, girls and boys by catalyzing social change in communities, rigorously studying and learning from the work we do, and sharing our experiences to shape the field.

Since our founding in 1999, we have grown from a small group of committed activists to a team of thirty vibrant staff. Our partners have increased from a few local collaborators to over sixty organizations across the region. As we have grown, our identity as an organization has been shaped by our experiences in violence prevention. At Raising Voices, we strive for meaningful impact, honor passion and rigor, and have fostered a small but dedicated team. We have remained committed to the communities of the Horn, East and Southern Africa, with increasing influence on action and dialogue across the globe.

Over the past twelve years we have cultivated an impassioned form of activism, awakened critical thinking and inspired change in homes, communities, schools, organizations and government. From injecting new ideas to creating the tools for acting on those ideas, our efforts have combined to inspire a new way of being.

What role have you played towards the children and women in Uganda in the last 10 years?

In 2006, we introduced the Good School Toolkit which is now in more than 500 schools. We looked  t the environment in schools and discovered that it does not favour learning for the children. The  Good Schools Programme aims to change the operational culture of schools to become more responsive to children’s needs and learning through prevention of violence against children. Creation of a conducive learning environment improves learning outcomes. It takes the collective of pupils or students, teachers, school administrators, parents and the community to create a good school. We run a multimedia campaign on radio, TV,  newspapers, film and other nontraditional media with the aim of cultivating a national dialogue on  AC. We have been socialized to believe that it is okay, for  example, to beat children when they  make mistakes. Children are not listened to. They have no view. However, we must recognize that  hey are people just like adults are and they have rights.