In November of 2008, Ubuntu Now announced a partnership with Sonke Gender Justice– a South African organization that promotes social awareness of gender issues relating to the local HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Today, we are pleased to introduce a new member of the Ubuntu Now / South Africa Project network: the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Program [TVEP].

Like Sonke Gender Justice, TVEP focuses on raising awareness for social issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Whereas Sonke Gender Justice’s ‘One Man Can‘ initiative places its attention on male education and Rape Prevention, TVEP takes a look at the other side of the equation. Their admirable focus is on building a supportive, educational, and healing environment for the victims of rape– as well as those of HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and child abuse. Furthermore, they have localized their efforts to the munincipality of Thohoyandou in South Africa’s Limpopo province. Read More…

Posted under Gender equality, HIV / AIDS, Post-rape care

Someone might argue that a lot of the problems related to HIV/AIDS and rape in South Africa are related to cultural traditions and therefore can hardly be changed.

I gathered some cultural traditions that came to my mind. This is a totally random list:

• Grown up men in some cultures marry girls as young as twelve years old.
• La Tomatina – People in Spain throw tons of tomatoes at each other every year.
• Also in Spain people spend their Sundays watching bullfights.
• Carneval in Rio – People dance for 5 days until they pass out.
• Female Genital Cutting is being performed as rights of passage ritual – mainly in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
• Tattooing spilled over from Polynesia into the Western World.
• Ramadan and Lent are among some religious practices of self-restraint.
• Women being threatened for violating laws – even though they’ve been raped.
• Millions of Muslims take a pilgrimages to Mecca each year.
• Restrictions on what people are allowed to eat: Kosher food, Ramadan, Lent, No pork for some cultures etc…
• Thousands of Germans gather in tents each year for their Oktoberfest – drinking huge amounts of their beloved beer.

In order to make my point I could define three main buckets for these cultural traditions: Read More…

Posted under Gender equality

Doing research on South Africa in support of my wonderful husband, Klaus’ vision, I came across the following:

In the United States, women have led most efforts to prevent domestic violence, this despite men playing
a critical role in setting social norms for other men and thereby being in a unique position
to influence subsequent generations. They have researched men’s views, feelings and
experiences about gender based violence and while most had been affected by it in some way, men only
showed a real willingness to intervene when it came to communicating with children –
perhaps finding them less intimidating. Read More…

Posted under Everything Else