Women admit to being instigators of GBV
The amount of women who have approached Ashley Thaba, CoFounder of the Healthy Families Foundation, to confess and own up to their part as instigators in the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) scourge has been a great surprise.
Since May 2020, Healthy Families Foundation collaborating with partners including the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, has been hosting workshops across the country, providing skills to better serve people affected by gender based violence and drug and substance abuse amongst others, as well as encouraging dialogue on issues that are hardly talked about.
These include finances, GBV, balancing time between spouses and children, as well as conflict resolution amongst others.
“When we first started these campaigns and talking about fighting GBV, based on the information I was given, I had made the assumption that GBV was mainly men against women. But after talking to thousands of Batswana over the past campaigns we have done, many women have come to us and essentially said they are also part of the problem.
“Sometimes they are not the actual physical abusers but they would say that they were maybe abusing alcohol or neglecting the children even using vulgar words to the point that their men did end up using physical abuse on them. We realised both genders are hurting,” Thaba said.
While she wants to make it clear that there is never a good reason for a man to hit and abuse a woman be it emotional, verbal or physical - Thaba noted that the campaigns have definitely brought about peace in homes as it has helped women to identify trigger points that they can work on and has helped men work on their communication and their expectations.
“A lot of the fights between couples come out of communication breakdown, financial breakdown and just unmet expectations because of poor communication and so, when we are doing these campaigns, we teach people good communication, how to express what you are expecting from your partner and how to determine realistic expectations,” Thaba explained.
And while some of the things they teach are basic like dealing with in-laws, spirituality, children, finances, among others, Thaba says they realised by dealing with these issues that often lead to aggression, then the fruit of GBV, depression, suicide, divorce amongst other go away “because you have dealt with the root of how to talk about those things.”
“And so we are about empowering people with practical daily tips to go back and apply in their homes. And we always find that couples who come all of the twelve days of the workshop, their relationships are restored, especially if they both come,” Thaba said.
The fifth instalment of the family building campaign will be in Francistown at the Civic Centre from the 18 October to 4th November. To impact more lives, Thaba appeals for sponsorship.
“We are praying that decision-makers of businesses and corporates would understand the value of this campaign based on the track record we have and come to the table and sponsor us.
“The reality is, it does take money to do an 18-day campaign with over 3000 people and we need a miracle to get a co-sponsor at least for this leg of the campaign.”