HIGHLIGHTS

• Gender-based violence against women and girls is pervasive around the world and occurs in all settings and among all socioeconomic, religious, and cultural groups.
• In Liberia, we applied a behavioral lens to strengthen Episcopal Relief & Development’s tools and materials for preventing gender-based violence, make them more accessible and actionable, and support a pathway to sustainability and community ownership.
• We are currently supporting Episcopal Relief & Development and its partners to adapt its programming to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Challenge

Gender-based violence is pervasive around the world and occurs in all settings and among all socioeconomic, religious, and cultural groups. The overwhelming global burden of gender-based violence is borne by women and girls, with the most common perpetrators of violence against women being intimate partners. Efforts to end gender-based violence must take an individual and community-level approach to combating violence and supporting survivors. 

Episcopal Relief & Development and its partners work to prevent and respond to gender-based violence by equipping faith and community leaders to transform harmful norms and connect survivors of violence to services, support, and justice. Faith leaders are trained and equipped to speak out against gender-based violence and for gender equity, and act as agents of change by facilitating dialogue in their communities. 

Applying a behavioral lens can help to strengthen such programming by supporting individuals to act as agents of change against violence and by shifting community-level norms and behaviors. 

Our Approach

In Liberia, we applied a behavioral lens to strengthen the program’s tools and materials—such as facilitation tools for faith leaders—to make them more accessible and actionable, and support the program’s pathway to sustainability and community ownership. We worked with Episcopal Relief & Development, Episcopal Church of Liberia Relief & Development, and other program stakeholders to: 

• Parse out the many behaviors—i.e., decisions and actions of individual actors—that occur throughout the program and are essential to shifting community norms around gender-based violence and gender equity
• Guide program stakeholders to identify program strengths, opportunities for improvement, and implications for sustainability and community ownership 
• Design new and adapted tools, materials, and approaches that respond to these learnings and incorporate insights from behavioral science. For example, we developed an activity that helps foster peer accountability among community members by collectively identifying the roles they play in ending violence against women and girls in their community.

We are currently supporting Episcopal Relief & Development and its partners to adapt the program to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by considering how the DRC and Liberian contexts differ and identifying necessary program adjustments.

Takeaway

Interested in our work applying behavioral science to global health? Email gh@ideas42.org or reach out to us on X at @ideas42 to join the conversation.