19 local organizations to watch: Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre

📋 What they do The Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre, or RWAMREC, promotes gender equity and prevents gender-based violence by focusing on positive masculinity. For example, its flagship Bandebereho program involves community health workers facilitating 17 sessions with men and couples with young children to promote positive men’s engagement in reproductive, maternal, and newborn health, violence prevention, and caregiving. Their other programs — such as Baho, While Gen G, and Gewep — have similar goals. 👀 Why we’re watching It promotes gender equity from an important lens: men. Rwanda is also an interesting case study given the country’s strong representation of women in leadership positions, including in parliament. However, cultural norms still impede opportunities for true gender equity. 🏢 Countries of operation Rwanda, with a second office in the Central African Republic. 🗓️ Founding year 2006. ➕ Leadership Fidele Rutayisire, founder and executive director. 📊 Impact snapshot RWAMREC has implemented several gender equality programs across the country and coordinated the Rwanda MenEngage Network, or RWAMNET, a gender equity group comprising 46 organizations. Since 2008, it has impacted approximately 700,000 people directly. This includes the Bandebereho program — which means “role model” — reaching over 20,000 couples and boasting a roughly 90% adherence rate. Given these results, Bandebereho has been recognized as an effective approach for reducing intimate partner violence, including by the World Health Organization and the U.N.’s RESPECT Women: Preventing violence against women framework. 💡Insider scoop RWAMREC relies heavily on government support. It therefore needs to conduct regular consultations with local and national authorities to scale up. Yet it will need to overcome turnover of government officials if it is to reach its objective to integrate Bandebereho into the national health system by 2027. Increased reporting for intimate partner violence, or IPV, presents another obstacle. In some cases, gender-responsive training can lead to an increased reporting of IPV cases, which can unintentionally increase the risk of harm on participants. To mitigate this, RWAMREC has a safeguarding policy and collaborates with a center that provides holistic, free-of-charge care to gender-based violence survivors. ➡️ Follow 🌐rwamrec.org