Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Programme (GRIP)

GRIP draws on community-based approaches, as well as broader partnerships, to empower women, men, and children through the process of counselling, education, advocacy, and lobbying. Its strategy involves providing a forum for healing after the trauma of crime and abuse by building community spirit through teamwork and team volunteers. The approach involves using research and education to empower individual community members who can then, in turn, empower all survivors of abuse. GRIP's mandate is to seek both pre- and post-rape interventions with a spectrum of role players, including government departments, schools, traditional healers, other non-government organisations (NGOs) and the business community. GRIP activities include:

• facilitating the links between gender violence and HIV/AIDS through various research projects
• providing ongoing training and capacity building to staff, volunteers, and other service providers
• advocating and lobbying for legislative and policy changes in the following sectors: criminal justice system, health, welfare, safety, security, and education
• working with traditional healers in an attempt to combine western and traditional interventions in order to prevent HIV/AIDS, and providing gender-sensitive care, treatment, and counselling to women, men, and children who have suffered all forms of violence.

The organisation has a commitment to professionalism, accessibility, accountability, confidentiality, and efficiency in service provision. The specific services GRIP offers include:

• GRIP provides information on where and how to access help through stokvels (community saving clubs) and tribal meetings
• GRIP conducts educational talks for schools on how to source help if children are abused or raped and other social welfare issues including the rights of children.
• GRIP workers travel to medical institutions where the forensic examinations are conducted. Counselling, education, toiletries, and comfort teddy bears are provided. GRIP also funds the antiretroviral therapy not provided in most institutions, to prevent the transmission of HIV.
• GRIP fieldworkers visit survivors at regular intervals after the rape (i.e. four days, one month, three months, and six months) to offer counselling and HIV/AIDS finger prick tests and, most importantly, to monitor the social circumstances that contributed to the sexual assault. GRIP's legal team then seeks appropriate intervention through government institutions.
• GRIP offers pre-court training to all survivors and caregivers to familiarise them with the court proceedings, with the goal of empowering them as witnesses. Meals are provided to all witnesses at court, and a well-equipped private waiting room has been established. GRIP's "Friend of the Court" acts as the link between the judicial system and the survivor and caregivers, while also advocating for survivors' judicial rights.

GRIP engages in prevention work that reaches out to young adults, in particular, through education and public awareness projects. To address the increase in youth crime, GRIP runs a year-long, life skills empowerment programme with three schools in Kabokweni. This programme teaches children how to say no and how to make informed choices.

Children, Women, Youth, HIV/AIDS, Gender, Conflict.

GRIP was established in 2000 in response to the high levels of rape and the high levels of HIV/AIDS infection transferred to child rape survivors. GRIP is based in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, and has branches in Masoyi, Kabokweni, KaNyamazane, Barberton, Lydenburg, and Tonga/Shongwe areas. GRIP reaches out to those who come from communities with limited or no resources. These areas historically have poor infrastructure - no street lighting, unsafe public transport areas, and minimal police protection - which GRIP says, "in turn encourages the increase in violent crimes. These communities are also characterised by limited employment opportunities, overcrowding, and lack of educational facilities extensive HIV/AIDS-related issues and alcoholism. All these factors impact strongly on violence."

GRIP's is engaging in networking and advocacy in an effort to enlarge its financed interventions to reach other areas. The vision of contracting out its staff and operations to government stakeholders is part of an effort to maintain sustainability. GRIP also aims to train and implement uniform operations that can be rolled out throughout Mpumalanga.