🌍 Community Health Workers (CHWs) are The Unsung Heroes in Gender Based Violence Response.
Meet Salome Ong'or and Juliah Wairimu, two dedicated CHWs from Kenya making a difference in the fight against GBV.
CHWs play a critical role in:
✅ Helping survivors find reporting mechanisms.
✅ Providing counseling and attending to physical injuries.
✅ Raising awareness in communities to prevent GBV.
💬 "We need to strengthen facilities and provide training so survivors can access the care they need," says Juliah.
Gender-based violence affects everyone—including men. CHWs like Salome and Juliah are in the frontline supporting GBV survivors, and advocating for stronger health systems to tackle GBV.
🎥 Watch their inspiring stories.
#16DaysOfActivism#EndGBV#EmpowerCHWs#GenderEquality#FAHForChange
Dendup is violence have been known on the rise. We've seen it everywhere, even in media houses, even in the midst of my community. I have even helped, I have even witnessed, I have even removed them knives from people's hands who wants to kill each other or even they want to stop themselves. From what we have seen at the community level though, there are quite a number of things that cause. Gender based violence. So among women, sometimes it's issues to do with getting contraception without consulting their husbands. So it becomes an issue. And the other thing also financial issues, because sometimes the woman is not working, may have to depend on their husband to provide. So sometimes the husband might go to go seek for work and doesn't get work to do so when he comes back with nothing, children need to eat. So sometimes it's. Becomes an issue. I support GBP survivors in this way. When I identify there is a household with such a case, I have some counseling skills. Just get to cancel the client. Even to console their client, I get empathetic in their situation. Then whenever, whenever necessary, we refer them appropriately. Professionally, I'm a counselor. So most of the cases to do with the sexual and gender based violence normally lands on the Chancellor's desk. So I felt that at becoming a community health promoter, I will be able to reach out to the community. Create awareness to them about their sexual and gender based violence and then also to take them through the modalities of reporting sexual gender based violence cases so that they are able to be assisted. Why I'm passionate about gender based violence is because we have witness several cases in my unit and really people are getting mistreated, even others have even lost their lives, their families that have even broken up. Children getting affected, family getting affected. I want people to know that gender based violence is not about violence towards women only, can also be towards men and so we need to be on the lookout. And we need to share more so that we are able to help our friends help us. When most people who go through gender based violence, they don't share about it. The one I saw, the man went through a bite from the wife. The wife was biting her because he came back home with nothing and children needed to eat so the wife could not raise the money to prepare food for their children so they instead they their wife. Became violent to the man and even. He, he, he invited the man. So to prevent gender based violence, we would like that we do a lot of awareness and sensitization activities at community level and at facility level and also support the facilities to have the, the resources that are needed to treat these clients. Because sometimes those services, they may not get all the services because of the limited, limited, limited setting. So we would like the. Facilities to be supported and strengthened so that they are able to attend to these clients without any issues.
