Follow Us on Google
From Desmond Mgboh, Kano
Grandmothers have been enlisted to play a critical role in the fight against gender based violence and advocacy for girl- child education in Kano and Jigawa States.
Kano State Commissioner for Women Affairs, Halima Amina Abdullahi disclosed this during the inception meeting in her office with a delegation of G- NEC project officials and community leaders in the state on Tuesday
The pilot project, she explained, is expected to be implemented in six communities in Kano State and in four communities in Jigawa State, with particular reference to areas with high rate of physical violence against women, high fate ofschool dropouts and low secondary school enrolment for girls of 12-17 years.
According to her, “The project is grounded in dRPC’s ground breaking ethnographic research which shows that within multi- generational households, grandmothers are the most influential shapers of gender norms and practices affecting wives and daughters”
She added that, “While men may be influenced by community and religious leaders, the grandmothers remains the predominant voice guiding the decisions and reinforcing them through the lens of tradition and culture”
The Commissioner regretted that prior to this initiative, many development partners had invested substantial resources in engaging various influencers to address GBV, worrying however that these efforts had yielded limited success in the North- West region.
She believed that the new initiative, anchored by the development Research and Projects Center (dRPC), would improve on the previous approaches.
