Religion plays a significant role in Rwandan families and society. It is the foundation of many people’s beliefs and can be the source of stereotypes and biases, especially among women. It was on that basis that HDI in partnership with TearFund, the project Transforming Masculinities was initiated. The project aims at merging rights-based and bible-based approaches to explain sexual and gender-based violence to them. On March 2-5, HDI invited heads of different churches and religious groups for a 3-day training on how to approach and tackle sexual and gender-based violence in their communities. They explained the laws pertaining the subject, background situation and how the bible itself condemns discriminatory violence. The Transforming Masculinities project works with churches that are committed and willing enough to integrate the project in their church’s daily activities. HDI starts with the head of the church and the deputy, and continues with at least 8 other people from the church with an equal number of men and women. In this work we begin by reaching out to church leaders as they are key influencers in Rwandan society. Church leaders then select gender champions who will conduct dialogues in their congregations. By beginning with church leaders, we ensure their buy-in and create a network of church-based trainers. Once they were all trained and understood the SGBV situation, they were then sent back to their communities to disseminate the information and educate others about SGBV and religion. The first phase that started in March has now trained 50 members of different churches and are now training others teams. The phase is the pilot to test how effective religious leaders would be in fighting against SGBV. Annonciata Mukayitete during the training. All the involved churches now have groups of gender champions who closely follow SGBV cases in their churches. Annonciata Mukayitete, Project Coordinator at HDI says they are already receiving feedback from the gender champions teams. “They were excited and enlightened when we trained them and explained the link between the bible and fight against SGBV. They have already started reporting and observing positive changes in their communities,” Mukayitete says, adding that it is likely that the project will be expanded to more churches once the first phase proves efficiency. Only one month into action, religious leaders have already started seeing change. The project is one of many other HDI initiatives to involve men in different occupations and fields in the fight against sexual and gender-based violence.
