This project will provide critical services and a safe space to victims of domestic violence and their families in the city of Secunderabad, India. Domestic violence affects around 50% of Indian women. Launched in December 2015, we opened our Secunderabad Counselling Centre in response to a huge demand for our services in that area. For the past year and a half we have been handling some of our most challenging cases of severe domestic violence through that Centre. Now, it's time to expand!
Between 40 - 80% of Indian married women face Domestic Violence. On average, 54% boys, girls, women and Men agree think that a man hitting his wife is a justifiable expression of masculinity. Little boys who witness their father hitting their mother are 5 times more likely to grow up to perpetrate abuse against their wives than boys who never witnessed abuse. Around 50% of girls wish they hadn't been born girls. India needs solutions to gender-based violence that include every stakeholder.
We provide free counseling, rights education and legal aid to victims of abuse and violence and work with the perpetrator as well as extended families to end the cycle of the abuse. These services are crucial as the Indian legal and police systems consistently fail to implement the progressive laws available to them to protect women and girls from violence. Without this support, victims and families experiencing violence are left with precarious option for recourse and little to no confidence.
Each PeaceMaker provides transformational services to 12 families each year. 10 PeaceMakers means 120 families' lives transformed forever. That's 120 women living free from abuse & violence, 120 perpetrators who have learned peaceful masculinity, 120 families who have discovered the peace that homes deserve. Crucially, it also means 120 homes in which children are growing up learning that violence is never acceptable. Together with our awareness work, this adds up to a lot of community change!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
