Practitioner Spotlight
Engaging men and boys in innovative interventions to end gender-based violence
The context
Our research is based within the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW).
Our project specifically focuses on exploring how we can work with men and boys across the Indo-Pacific region to prevent and intervene with gender-based violence. Examining systemic drivers of violence and how to build this into our responses to men and boys is key in our work. As part of our research, we work with practitioners to best understand the challenges and barriers faced in the sector, as well as where innovation, change, and capacity building is needed.
In our research we have employed the Kin and Country Framework to help us look at innovation in interventions for men using violence as well as for bystanders.
An example of this is when we ran a workshop for practitioners who worked in the gender-based violence sector. During the workshop, we asked the attendees to think about areas in their own practice that could benefit from innovation and to facilitate this brainstorming we presented the Kin and Country Framework as a pedagogical tool. During the activities, we encouraged participants to consider the four perspectives of the framework and consider ideas from outside the western humancentric view.
This approach reframed innovation not just as technical change but as relational and place-based practice. Building on this learning, we continue to use the framework to shape our conceptualisation of innovation and plan to apply it in future workshops using similar reflective and relational processes.
From a facilitation perspective, the framework also strengthened our understanding that the spaces in which we work, and the relationships we foster, are as critical as the program content itself.
Key Learnings
Learnings from applying this framework have strengthened both the exploration of innovation in interventions as well as the facilitation of workshops with practitioners who work in the gender-based violence sector.
Funded innovation in the sector has mostly come from western anglo-centric thinking, and the Kin and Country Framework has given our research team, as well as the practitioners we work with, the tools to consider impacts beyond the present.
We have considered how past approaches to interventions can inform future innovation, as well as how interventions not only shape the lives of those using violence, but the broader community too.
It has taught us to value knowledge systems outside the mainstream and to ground our approaches in reciprocity, respect, and connectedness.