Johannesburg - February is a month focused on love, for many women it does not change the violent relationships they find themselves in.
South Africa has made femicide and rape part of its culture. According to the 2019/2020 crime statistics, 116 people were raped every day. Of the cases reported, 43% took place in private residences, be it the survivor’s own home or the home of a relative, friend or neighbour.
“Young women, if you look at HIV or GBV, either one, young women particularly 15 to 24 years of age are disproportionately affected by both epidemics. In focusing on HIV, that led us to the focus on this population. Unfortunately, while GBV does spread across all age demographics, we do see this young population bearing the heaviest burden,” said Christianne Wendler, a behavioural programmes and GBV (gender-based violence) manager at Shout-It-Now.
Shout-It-Now is a non-profit company that started in 2007 and provides free, mobile community-based HIV prevention services, GBV services, and sexual and reproductive health services to communities in Gauteng and the North West.
Most acts of violence against women are also committed by people they know, such as current or former partners or family members. When Covid-19 first hit, over 2 300 calls and complaints were reported in the first five days of lockdown. The World Health Organization reports that 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence.
“Violence against women and young girls isn’t just restricted to physical or sexual assault, it can also be emotional, psychological or financial.
“When you have your earnings taken away, you aren’t in control of your health care, you have no say in your access to education, and your selfworth and image are constantly harassed and abused, these are all forms of violence,” said Wendler.
When the non-profit first started it was in response to the HIV epidemic, using innovative technology in HIV testing.
“At the height of our testing programme we were able to test mass volumes of people with greater efficiency. We started expanding our services, looking at comprehensive service delivery specifically looking at adolescent girls and young women around sexual reproductive health in general.”
Funded by Pepfar (the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, programmes focusing specifically on young women have been made available to the nonprofit.
“Many partners like us operating in the Dream programme are focused on the two main areas of sexual reproductive health and violence, HIV prevention and education. We offer HIV testing and PreP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), which has a 90% efficacy, which is important for young women in particular. They bear the highest burden of HIV. There are a lot of misconceptions around PreP, so that is a really important service that is available.”
The work Wendler and her team are doing with the Department of Health includes adding contraception options to their services.
“We have seven behavioural programmes including Man2Man, focused on men. We have Healthy Choices, that focuses on our littlest kids, and we have Family Matters that focuses on parenting. Our longest programme, 15 Questions, runs for about three months and we run it in schools, community settings and wherever we can.”
Shout-It-Now is in the process of producing an app as an addition to its services.
Shout-It-Now has a call centre number, 010 020 6021, for anyone who may need help with getting their services.
The Star