Gender Mobile Initiative is a non-governmental organization established primarily to complement the policy and program effort of Government and relevant stakeholders in eliminating sexual and gender-based violence and particularly in environments of learning.

As an Organization, we have spent the last 3 years driving Policy engagements towards deconstructing the norms and culture that enable power-centred harassment to thrive in environments of learning in Partnership the Ford Foundation.

Sexual harassment is gradually assuming critical dimensions in Nigeria’s higher education institutions. More interesting is the significant difference in understanding what constitutes sexual harassment which partly accounts for the inability of persons to identify acts of sexual harassment as one.

Focus Group Discussion held with 11 members of different student bodies in Ekiti State University indicate that this could further perpetuate the culture of sexual harassment until it becomes an acceptable norm in environments of learning.

They also highlighted other factors such as unequal power relations, lack of confidential reporting platforms and fear of being further victimized. The Sex for Grades video by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) further reinforced these points.

In response to this, Gender Mobile launched the Campus Initiative. In the last eighteen (18) months, our Campus project implementation has morphed into partnerships with 101 tertiary education institutions for the design of individual institution’s context specific policy on sexual harassment prohibition and institutionalization of bystander intervention through the constitution of 30 Student Campus Ambassadors per institution. Our next big step is to unveil our feature-rich mobile platform.

The mobile application is a feature-rich platform with confidentiality-driven reporting, reported case tracking, support community/safe space that supports proactive bystander intervention, information escrow, access learning Centre to learn about policies, case appeal and onboarding information function.

The launch is billed to draw the Heads of partner institutions and relevant agencies such as the ICPC, National Orientation Agency, Committee of Vice-Chancellors, Ministry of education, regulatory agencies such as the NUC, NCCE, NBTE, Rectors and Provosts of Institutions, Civil Society organizations, media partners and student leaders across Nigeria.

The Keynote will be delivered by the Ekiti State First Lady and Feminist thinker, Bisi-Adeleye Fayemi and an informational panel session is expected to have critical stakeholders. The event would hold on April 27, 2021, at Rockview Royale Hotel Abuja.

Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/04/gender-mobile-initiative-launches-app-against-gender-violence/