RWAMREC participates in a training on Researching violence against women in Kampala, Uganda

From 4^th to 16^th October 2010, RWAMREC Program coordinator, Mr SAMVURA Oswald attended a training course on Researching violence against women. This training was organized by Raising Voices and facilitated by Dr.NAEEMA Abrahams and Dr.SHANAAZ Mathews both from Medical Research Council of South Africa and SIMUKAI Shamu from University of Western Cape.

23 people (among them 6 men) from 11 countries (Rwanda, Burundi, South Africa, Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Zambia) attended this training that took place in Muyenga at Landmark Hotel.

The training aimed at strengthening the capacity of service providers, activists and researchers to participate in research by developing an understanding of all factors associated with the planning and the implementation of research on GBV and to use it effectively. Specifically the following objectives were assigned to this training:

1) Develop a critical understanding of the issue of gender and gender based violence.

2) Demonstrate an understanding of violence against women as a public health issue.

3) Demonstrate an understanding of how to develop a research strategy.

4) Demonstrate an understanding of the different methods used in violence against women with an emphasis of the use of epidemiology in such studies

5) Demonstrate an understanding of how the research can be used in advocacy

6) Demonstrate an understanding of the complexities and awareness of the challenges of doing research on gender violence.

Achievements

During this training, many subjects related to research process have been developed such as identifying a problem, collecting and analyzing the data and reporting the results. Participants learnt different steps of a gender based violence research and practical exercises were made on how to make a literature review, how to formulate the research objectives and questions, how to decide on the research design and methods and how to write a study protocol.

Different approaches/methods (qualitative and qualitative) to research and different tools used to collect information (in-depth interview, focus groups discussion, structured or semi-structured interviews etc), to analyze data in researching gender violence against women with Epi info (quantitative) or open mode (qualitative) as well as the research methodology were explored during the training.

The training has been also an opportunity for participants to share on specifics projects/experiences from different institutions. The projects coordinator of RWAMREC presented the findings of the study on masculinity and GBV in Rwanda:
experiences and perceptions of men and women. Other presentations were made by the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics (Experiences of Quantitative GBV Research using the 2006 UDHS in Uganda), the Makerere University (on different studies made on GBV in Kampala), by ACFODE (on sexual and gender based violence in Pallisa and Kisoro districts), and CEDOVIP (on the advocacy campaign based on GBV research findings).