Call for Entries: Innovation Competition on Youth-led GBVF Prevention in Urban Spaces

Are you a young person (18-35) running a project or intervention that contributes to gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) prevention and enhancing community safety? We’re looking for you!

T he South African Cities Network, with support of the GIZ Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention Programme in convening the Urban Safety Reference Group, is calling for youth-led, neighbourhood-scale and public space-based GBVF prevention interventions in urban areas.

Cities are growing exponentially as many people (including youth) migrate for better social and economic opportunities. Rapid urbanisation has contributed to higher rates of income inequality in cities, where relatedly, many types of interpersonal violence are concentrated.

This call acknowledges that young people in particular, have a role to play in violence prevention processes because:

a) they make-up the majority of both victims and perpetrators of violence;

b) youth support programmes often ignore the intersectionality of risk factors, often only focusing on unemployment;

c) youth voices are often not considered in policy making and implementation processes albeit that these have a direct impact on how they navigate their existence and their access to resources; and

d) where young people have developed interventions that respond to critical community issues and needs (many of which have safety impacts, although not necessarily designed as such), youth capacity building programmes are often geared towards entrepreneurship skills training and financial business resourcing and less on community development and/or demystifying how to partner with government as well as other actors for interventions that benefit communities.

Objectives of the competition:

Idea-incubation and learning exchange that highlights the various ways that young people in their diversity are contributing to community safety and connect them to resources from relevant government departments.
Capacitate young people to effectively mobilise for and run programmes that contribute to community safety broadly and GBVF prevention specifically, even beyond the competition period.
Seed fund innovative youth-led GBVF prevention and community safety interventions, contributing to their sustainability and scalability.
Catalyse innovative and sustainable collaborations between youth and state actors.
Document and showcase innovative GBVF prevention projects and share lessons learnt emerging from the competition process.
Demonstrate the importance of neighbourhood scale, context-based and evidence informed responses to GBVF prevention.
Demonstrate the value of meaningful engagement with and leadership by young people in addressing community safety issues.
Advocate for the scaling up of successful gender-based violence prevention interventions and their systematisation within municipal planning, budgeting and implementation.

What kinds of topics/themes can your GBVF prevention project be in:

Public space/ park activations, including sports programmes.
Arts-based interventions designed for awareness raising, communication or encouraging free expression e.g., for women, girls and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Community safety forum activities such as gendered safety auditing and programming.
Awareness raising and behaviour change programmes targeted at youth broadly, men, boys and/or members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Educational workshops to build awareness and encourage reflection on harmful gender norms, experiences and culture (these could be through thematic community groups or movements, ward committees etc.).
Anything that related to neighborhood-scale GBVF prevention in urban areas.

Process:

A four-week, 20-hour virtual capacity building (R500 mobile data provided), from 30 October to 30 November 2023.
Three one-hour long individual mentorship sessions between16 October 2023 - 31 January 2024.
Round 2 selection after capacity building based on how your project’s impact has changed following training, 4-8 December 2023.
Selection of three GBVF prevention projects in Round 2 to receive a grant of R 15 000 to be used only for the purchase of your desired project-related equipment, materials and/or stationery in December 2023.
Virtual learning event(s) 1-16 February 2024.
Final multi-media competition process documentation by 29 February 2024.

Eligibilty rules	Adjudication Criteria
Youth led community-based interventions/ programmes which innovatively support GBVF prevention, particularly at neighbourhood level in urban areas.	Innovation – how does this intervention creatively and resourcefully address GBVF in the context of increased visibility of GBVF incidents, limited government resourcing for safety interventions overall and entrenched socio-cultural norms around gender and violence in South Africa.
Innovative intervention must currently be in operation/ ongoing with known outputs and impact.	Relevance of the topic to the NSP on GBVF, ICVPS and IUDF.
South African young individuals, youth-led CSOs and NGOs working on GBVF prevention issues in urban areas.	Clear target group of intervention and compelling plan to result in a sustainable gender responsive or transformative impact on the target group or the community in which the target group is located.
Any financial support will purely be used for the implementation of the agreed upon intervention.	Clear documentation of the project implementation methodology and outcome thus far.
Government agencies and entities are not eligible to apply.	Potential for upscaling and replicating of innovative project in other/ similar context.
Successful applicants should be willing to have their project profiled in various digital platforms and participate in learning -exchange engagements.
Passionate, committed people wanting to contribute to building inclusive and safer communities in South Africa.

To participate in this virtual training, receive one-on-one mentorship for your GBVF prevention project and stand a chance to win a grant of up R15 000 to enhance your GBVF prevention, submit your proposal (maximum four pages) by email to Tlholohelo Mokgere at tlholohelo.mokgere@giz.de and Siphelele Ngobese at siphelele@sacities.net by 23h59 on 08 October 2023. Inquiries can be made to the same email addresses untll 5 October 2023.

For the full competition brief and terms and conditions, please click here.