Summit 2014: Moshupa Sub District Council

Synopsis* Moshupa Sub District has in the past years experienced a high rate of Gender Based Violence. This has led to the Sub District and Police to intervene through community education and counselling, which was focused at Ralekgetho village. This village had registered more than half of the GBV statistics in the Sub district in 2013.It was from these interventions that the Sub District realised that Gender Based Violence victims are mostly children and youth. It was then that the Sub District decided to combat Gender Based Violence amongst children by educating them while they are still young. This was done in order to have them grow up with this knowledge so that they become an informed generation on Gender Based Violence. We conducted the following activities in 2014/2015 which were geared towards educating our young generation, and the community as a whole on Gender Based Violence; • Commemorated the Father ’s Day by participating at Molemo wa kgang(Botswana Television). Our Leaders;Kgosi Kebinatshwene Mosielele from Manyana and Kgosi Oscar Mosielele were part of the discussion panel. The panel debated on issues affecting men parenting, roles and responsibilities of fathers as part of the family. This emphasised on children ’s rights to know both their parents, whether they are married or not. • The Sub District hosted the Family Day, of which the theme was ” Advancing Social Intergration and Intergenerational Solidarity; ensuring Work-Family Balance and Confronting Family Poverty ’. This theme was meant to cause all member states to reflect on policies and programmes intended to address the family. To enhance programmes to effectively serve families as well as give the family the respect it deserves as a nation building entity. Furthermore, this emphasised on the roles and responsibilities of each member of the family. • There was a commemoration of June 16 at Lotlhakane West. • We also conducted two retreat camps for Orphans and Vulnerable Children at Moremi Game Reserve and Mmokolodi Game Reserve.This presentation will focus on retreat camps as measures deliberately undertaken by the Sub District to address issues of Gender Based Violence amongst our youth. The Sub District Management felt that since we have realised, through our previous interventions that our young generation is the one that is mostly affected by Gender Based Violence, it will be wise to come up with strategies of addressing these issues amongst the children, to instil knowledge on Gender Based Violence in them while they are in their early years, hence the retreat camps. The Ark n ’ Mark programme which uses the Earth Methodology was used during the retreats. The method targets the adolescents and has been developed to help them confront and mitigate issues in their lives.Key objectives * The retreat Camps targeted 80 children aged between 12 and 17 years of age. They were set out to address the following, but not limited to, objectives; a) To help children identify stressors in their lives b) For children to learn that they can be active participants in changing their