Perspective · From the project brief
Why the boychild?
Many projects have focused on girls and women while boys have been left behind. Ayşegül Kandaş explains why reaching boys early — and their parents — matters in the effort to end gender-based violence.
By AwqafSA Women's Fund
In her project brief, Ayşegül Kandaş begins with the scale of gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa, and with the harmful patriarchal norms and gender-power imbalances that Amnesty International South Africa identifies as underpinning it.
Many projects have been run for the girlchild and for women, she writes, while the boychild has been left behind. Teachers receive too little in-house training, learners too little values education, and townships and informal settlements have too few social workers and too little psychosocial support.
Reaching boys in time
The project focuses on boys in Grades 6 to 8 because, by the time learners reach Matric, it is too late to make a viable impact. Speakers — experts on bullying, drug abuse, gangsterism, crime and suicide, alongside motivational speakers and role models such as CEOs, professors, doctors and directors of NPOs — address the issues the boys face. Kaizer Chiefs, the main partner of AwqafSA Women's Fund, provides a legendary football player to address the boys at each workshop.
Parents are part of the answer
It is impossible to focus on the boychild alone. Each workshop includes a separate session with parents on parenting skills and on issues such as absentee fathers, single mothers, alcoholism and domestic violence — and the speakers become a safe and free network that parents can reach out to.
These workshops are in effect a mentorship program that tries to instill certain values, give a sense of purpose, and create change of behavior in the future leaders of this country.