These efforts focus on building protective school environments, empowering adolescent girls with life skills and reproductive health knowledge, engaging families through positive parenting, and transforming harmful gender norms through community dialogue and advocacy in order to achieve positive social behavior change. UNICEF’s approach integrates SRHR, life skills, and child protection within existing government and civil society systems and aligns closely with the Ministries of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), Gender and Children’s Affairs (MoGCA), Social Welfare (MoSW), and Local Councils.

The programme emphasizes inclusion, localization, and partnerships with grassroots CSOs, particularly women’s rights organizations. To address gender-based violence and harmful practices, UNICEF’s interventions within this Spotlight will focus on strengthening institutional, community, and family systems: A whole-school approach in three districts will improve school responsiveness to SRGBV through teacher and community structures training on teacher’s code of conduct, establishment of school clubs and safe spaces, and gender and disability equitable environments creating safer, more inclusive schools for girls and boys.

Sectors and Areas of Specialization 

• Cross Sectoral Areas
  • Communication for development
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Research and data analysis
  • Training, capacity building and capacity development
• Education
  • Learning Outcomes
  • Skills development for adolescents
• Protection
  • Child protection
  • Prevention of and response to crime/violence

Geographic Focus

• Sierra Leone
  • Northern

Expected Results

• Outcome: Gender equitable social norms, attitudes and behaviors change at community and individual levels to prevent violence against women and girls and harmful practices, including as a result of women’s economic empowerment interventions.
  • Output 1: National evidence-based programmes are developed to promote gender-equitable norms, attitudes, and behaviors including Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for in and out of school settings. Implement the whole-school approach to strengthen awareness and responsiveness to school-based gender-based violence (SGBV) in 3 districts (100 schools per district), including technical support to school management and teaching staff. Scale up the Positive Parenting Education Programme with adolescent-focused curriculum that covers inclusive support for children with disabilities, for both in-school and out-of-school settings. Establish and operationalize safe spaces to empower out-of-school girls through life skills training, comprehensive sexuality education, and linkages to vocational and economic empowerment programmes.
  • Output 2: Community advocacy platforms are established/strengthened to develop strategies and programmes, to promote gender-equitable norms, attitudes and behaviors, including in relation to women and girls’ sexuality and reproduction, self-esteem and transforming harmful masculinities - building critical mass supporters of change and champion dialogue challenging SGBV and discriminatory gender norms. Support community-led dialogues, campaigns, and positive deviance models that challenge harmful gender norms and practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage. Facilitate adolescent engagement in community mobilization initiatives that build critical mass for positive gender norm change, targeting both adolescent, youth and adult influencers. advocates.
  • Output 3: Decision-makers can advocate for implementation of legislation and policies on ending VAWG and protecting the rights of women and girls. Roll out a GBV-focused social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) strategy and multimedia campaign tailored to the local context, with emphasis on adolescent participation. Monitoring and evaluation Implementing partners will be required to apply monitoring and evaluation frameworks tailored to their interventions, including: Clear indicators and tools to measure changes toward more gender-equitable norms, attitudes, and behaviours at community and individual levels. Tools to monitor the number of participants reached, as well as their characteristics (e.g. age, gender, disability status, school enrolment status), disaggregated where possible. Ways of ensuring the targeting and participation of girls with disabilities Processes for regularly collecting and analysing data to inform programming decisions and adapt implementation strategies in real time.

Selection Criteria

• Clarity of activities and expected results
• Contribution of resource
• Cost effectiveness
• Innovative approach
• Sustainability of intervention

For more information, visit UN Partner Portal.

https://www.unpartnerportal.org/landing/opportunities/