Hekate Papadaki - Grants and Development Manager, Rosa Fund - DFID Girl Summit 2014

"We are working with the diaspora community in the UK. We heard... on Monday that we have 137,000 women living with FGM in the UK and approximately 60,000 girls born to those women." Hekate Papadaki

Panel Discussion: Spotlight on Progress "Reaching Millions, Not Hundreds: Experiences in Scaling Up Community Social Change"

Context: This presentation is from one of the 14 "Spotlights on Progress" video-recorded sessions from the Girl Summit 2014, London, United Kingdom (UK). The sessions were organised to share best practice between practitioners, grassroots activists, and government ministers across the issues of female genital mutilation (FGM) (also FGM/C - female genital mutilation/cutting) and child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM). Girl Summit is a project of the Department for International Development (DFID), UK.

Profile of speaker: A featured panelist of this Spotlight session was Hekate Papadaki, Grants and Development Manager, Rosa Fund, whose presentation was entitled "Tackling FGM Initiative - Funders: Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Trust for London, Rosa Fund, Comic Relief / Fundees: FORWARD, Manor Gardens and others". 

"Hekate Papadaki is the Grants and Development Manager of the Tackling FGM Initiative. She has worked to promote equalities and access to healthcare for refugee and minority ethnic communities for the past ten years in the UK and has been working to end FGM for the past 4 years with the Tackling FGM Initiative. Hekate is also a founding member of Aitima, a Greek NGO providing legal aid and humanitarian support to asylum seekers and migrants in Greece." 

Strategy overview: Papadaki pointed out that their work is with minors, that they are dispersed around the country, and that they have different cultural justification for practicing FGM. Therefore, the same approach will not work with all of them. In addition, when migrant communities first arrive in destination countries, they feel the need to keep their traditions as a way of maintaining their identities. The Tackling FGM Initiative has worked with over 10,000 people in the UK. An evaluation in 2013 found change in attitudes towards greater rejection of FGM among these populations since the start of the project in 2010. Her project has trained over 1,000 frontline professionals to identify and support girls at risk of FGM, raised awareness among the general population, and helped drive legislation that is designed to protect thousands more girls.

Her focus was on what the organisation has found and what can be replicated. First, the three essential elements for working on FGM are community engagement, a successful communication strategy, and political will. Community engagement involved letting programmes find their way with particular communities, using social networks, particularly recruiting community champions who brought their social networks, as well as their expertise, with them, and involving survivors of FGM as experts at all levels - consultants, managers, frontline workers, and spokespeople. Survivors have the ability to "de-normalise" FGM in their communities, making it "essential that they are always engaged." Survivors and young people from affected communities have led the social media strategy to keep FGM in the news weekly to help mount political pressure. Influencing legislation means ensuring that the knowledge from the ground level is communicated to the government to urge protection of children. Continuous lobbying has been needed so that departments recognise that protection of children from FGM is their responsibility. That recognition is bringing about training of frontline professionals throughout government departments and mandated reporting of FGM by health professionals. In addition, the Tackling FGM Initiative is asking for funding for survivors of FGM and for funding for grassroots prevention.

From the One Year On progress report on the UK's role: "At Girl Summit 2014, the UK government announced an unprecedented package of measures to tackle FGM and child, early and forced marriage.

Since the Summit, the UK has delivered on these commitments.

Domestically this has meant:

• Strengthening the law on FGM significantly, including introducing an offence of failing to protect a girl from risk of FGM, FGM Protection Orders, and mandatory reporting of FGM by relevant professionals.
• Establishing a dedicated FGM Unit which provides outreach support to local areas, and coordinates activity across government.
• Providing resources for frontline professionals and distributing over 440,000 communication materials.
• Funding a £3m national FGM Prevention Programme with a package of measures to support NHS staff in preventing FGM, protecting girls at risk and caring for survivors. 
• Securing signatures from over 350 leaders of every major religion in the UK to a declaration to make clear that no faith condones FGM.
• Launching a force level inspection on the police response to Honour Based Violence with a focus on FGM and forced marriage.
• Funding a programme to bring together experts on FGM to support local authorities and 29 community prevention and awareness projects, including supporting a network of over 60 community champions.

Internationally:

• The UK has launched a £36 million programme to accelerate action to end child marriage, including £8 million for civil society working on sexual and reproductive health and rights overseas.
• The UK has strengthened implementation of its flagship £35 million programme to tackle FGM, including launching the social change and research components of the programme."

 
Overview of this Summit Session: From the Girl Summit summary document: "We know community-led social change is an effective, long-term strategy to promote abandonment of FGM and child, early and forced marriage. Reaching millions of people will be a key element of success in the global movement to end the practices and change the futures of as many girls. Yet the intensity, cost and technique of community-led social change present important challenges. Experiences in taking what worked with hundreds in one setting and scaling it up to entire districts and nations will be presented in this interactive spotlight...."

The speakers, in order of appearance, are:

Sonali Khan, Vice President, Breakthrough.

Adama Ndiaye, Secretary-General of the Ministry of the Family, Women and Children, Government of Senegal.

Dr. Ben Cislaghi, Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning, Tostan.

Ato Haileleul Seyoum, Director of Women and Youth Mobilization and Participation Enhancement, Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs, Government of Ethiopia, and Dr Annabel Erulkar, Director, Population Council Ethiopia.

Hekate Papadaki, Grants and Development Manager, Rosa Fund.

The session is moderated by Rajesh Mirchandani World Affairs Correspondent/Anchor at BBC News."

Strategy points from the session outline include:

• "Scale Matters - given how widespread these practices are and the numbers involved.
• Girls should be at the heart of any approach. Girls can’t and don’t register complaints after the act. Action must come first to enable girls to have a view - to be able to able to say no and for example resist early marriage for example. Girls clubs and other mechanisms can support this process.
• How girls are valued matter (especially for child marriage) - dowry issues and how girls are seen matters. Push is to get families to invest in education of girls.
• Discourse matters - Issue is to shift the discourse on these issues and how they are talked about. Communities’ deliberations and discussions are crucial. These deliberations change communities’ views. 
• Approaches can transform- Rights based approaches on these issues can challenge the vision that communities have of gender issues and rights more widely.
• How communities function matters - However, when community spaces and debate is restricted and excluded it needs to be opened up before change takes place. Women must join the public space to become actors.
• National leadership and political will matters - governments changing laws and clear messaging has an impact without it things are harder.
• Service providers play a role - health providers (esp. Reproductive health) child workers, education systems etc. all have a role and should be included in any approach. These actors need a shared vision and ambition.
• Religious leaders are important. - In the past child marriage was given support by the church. This must change.
• Linkages matter - Strong link between domestic violence, wider gender relations and CEFM.
• Communications are important - A clear communications strategy using media and other channels are important for scale. National schemes under which communities make public pledges have a role. They can tie in large groups of people.
• Many interventions are driven by limited evidence. - Research and randomized trials are on-going and will give us more information on what works and how. However, these sort of programmes that involve community engagement need to be flexible and learn from the process of implementation using trial and error."

Footage of this (available below) and other "Spotlights" are available on DFID’s YouTube channel.

The Girl Summit is a project of DFID. Click here and scroll down to see the full list of individuals and organisations committed to working on girls' issues, as well as a list of Girl Summit Charter signatories.