Eliminating Violence Against Women and Children

At the end of last year you kindly donated to our campaign on Eliminating Violence Against Women and Children. The aim of the fundraiser was to create a city wide campaign to work on eliminating violence against women and children, provide counselling and support fr those in need, educate around safe relationships and non violent means of communication, educate men and women around women's rights and work on changing cultural norms in order for violence to be erradicated. As promied, we spent your kind donation wisely and delivered this and many interventions in the first half of the year. 

Today we wanted to let you know that we are continuing to work hard during this time to protect women and children. 

Did you know that a crisis like the COVID19 pandemic disproportionately affects women and girls and can set back gains on gender equality?... This is due to gender norms and pre-existing inequalities. Gender Based Violence rises with increased tension and food / economic insecurity. There is also an increased risk of sexual exploitation or abuse for those in precarious situations, plus and increased risk of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights being compromised as people are unable to access certain services. In addition, many women are employed in the informal sector in Cambodia meaning they are unable to claim sick pay and have few protections from job losses. The closure of schools and sick family members means that the burden of unpaid care responsibilities usually falls to the women in the family.

Despite being unable to meet in person, we have reached out to 100 families to see how we can help them at this time. We have continued to conduct our counselling and referal service via the phone, and have spoken with 72 families women as of the end of May. We are also working hard to create online resources for women and men to continue learning about women's rights, gender euality, positive parenting and more.

Thank you for your support at the end of 2019, it helped us to make a great difference and we hope you enjoyed this update on our continued work in this area.

With thanks and best wishes, 

Gemma and the WRC team