The Coalition for Good Schools: Voices from the Global South

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Global momentum for preventing violence against children (VAC) is gathering pace. Knowledge is being synthesized, policy is being developed and programs are currently being prioritized and invested in. We believe that schools offer a unique entry point for that work, and yet at present, the issue of VAC at schools receives too little attention from Ministries of Education, donors or global policymakers. Furthermore, we believe that the voices of practitioners from the Global South are particularly missing from this debate.

Given that a majority of children live in the Global South, interventions aimed at their schools must be designed with their specific needs and contexts in mind. However, few prevention programmes are implemented, documented, evidenced or tailored to the needs of the schools in the Global South. Even fewer interventions concentrate on adult to child violence, or the overall operational culture of the school, both of which are of significant concern in the Global South.

The Coalition for Good Schools brings together leading practitioners and experts from the Global South who have developed or studied interventions to prevent VAC in and through schools, and who are now coordinating a strategic contribution to this global discourse. It is a growing movement that aims to galvanize the work of documenting, synthesizing and promoting tested interventions and practice-based knowledge.

In this conversation, the co-founders and core members of the Coalition for Good Schools will begin by making a case for why we should prioritize prevention of VAC in and through schools, highlighting the structural and strategic opportunities for registering early gains. This will be followed by a brief presentation on the evidence and programmatic approaches to VAC prevention in schools in the Global South, as co-authors of a landmark evidence review, Prevention of Violence in and through Schools in the Global South, present their findings on the evidence base for this work.

Speakers from the three regional hubs of the Coalition from Asia, Latin America, and Africa will then present specific examples of promising interventions currently being implemented in their regions. A discussant from Uganda will explore the promise of a whole-school intervention to transform the operational culture of schools at scale. A discussant from Colombia will speak to an elementary school-based multicomponent initiative for prevention of violence through socioemotional learning being implemented in Colombia, México and Chile, presenting on the journey towards addressing VAC in schools in Latin America and speaking to the complex challenges faced by practitioners addressing VAC in the region. A discussant from India will discuss the range of school-based interventions in India, with focus on a school-based curricula on gender, rights, and life-skills, designed to address human rights and diversity, and what that national experience means for the wider international debate on what works to prevent VAC in the Global South. Finally, a discussant from Tanzania will discuss the importance of movement building to put citizens at the centre of the solutions to prevent VAC in schools to ensure the relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability of VAC prevention approaches employed in a particular school and school-surrounding community.

The panel will then discuss what we are learning collectively and highlight promising directions for the future.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Organizer

• Devin Faris, RAISING VOICES

Chair

• Dipak Naker, Coalition for Good Schools

Individual Presentations

• Centering voices from the Global South to prevent violence against children in schools - Dipak Naker, Coalition for Good Schools

• Prevention of violence against children in and through schools in the Global South: an evidence review - Pranita Achyut, International Center for Research on Women

Discussants

• Sunita Menon, Breakthrough Trust

• Martha Muhwezi, Forum for African Women Educationalists- Africa

• John M.P Kalage, HakiElimu