What are the efforts of the Women’s Justice Initiative (WJI) to curb violence against women.
Answers
Women’s Justice Initiative (WJI) empowers indigenous Guatemalan women and girls to improve their lives through education, access to legal services, and gender-based violence prevention......First, WJI will train 29 women ages 18 – 50 who have completed the Women’s Rights Education Program (a six-month legal literacy course that empowers women to assert their rights and links them to legal services) to become Community Advocates. Graduates are nominated by their peers to train as Community Advocates and serve as local leaders, provide informational workshops, link vulnerable women and girls to legal services, and act as peer mentors in their communities. The Advocates undergo intensive leadership and human rights training and learn to facilitate workshops on preventing VAWG. Following the training, the Community Advocates will lead Women’s Rights Education and Adolescent Girl workshops in their communities, refer women and girls to WJI for legal aid, conduct home visits to identify women and girls who need legal assistance, and collaborate with locally elected leaders to develop and implement community action plans to prevent VAWG. The Advocates’ work at the community level is critical to increasing access to justice because they provide a vital link to vulnerable girls and women, support them in accessing legal services, and offer strategies based on their experiences as rural, indigenous women to achieve a broader transformation in attitudes and practices regarding VAWG.....