Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) remains a significant social, public health, human rights, and development challenge affecting individuals and communities across the world. It includes sexual violence, intimate partner violence, physical and psychological violence, harmful practices, and other forms of abuse rooted in unequal power relations and gender inequality. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately one in three women globally have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, most often by an intimate partner (WHO, 2021). These figures demonstrate that SGBV is not only an individual concern but a widespread structural and community-level issue.
Governments, civil society organizations, humanitarian actors, and development partners continue to invest in programmes designed to prevent SGBV, strengthen survivor services, and address harmful gender norms. However, sustainable change cannot be achieved through institutional interventions alone. Communities play a central role in shaping attitudes, behaviours, social norms, and responses to violence. Research and global prevention frameworks increasingly emphasize the importance of addressing social norms, gender inequality, and relationship dynamics as part of comprehensive violence prevention (WHO, 2019).
This makes community awareness and meaningful community engagement essential components of effective SGBV prevention. However, raising awareness involves much more than distributing information. Posters, radio programmes, social media campaigns, community meetings, and training sessions can increase knowledge, but knowledge alone does not necessarily result in changes in attitudes or behaviour. Effective engagement requires communities to participate in identifying problems, discussing harmful norms, developing solutions, and creating environments where survivors can access support safely.
At Bodmando Consulting Group, we recognize that meaningful SGBV prevention requires approaches that are participatory, context-sensitive, inclusive, survivor-centred, and grounded in evidence. Effective community engagement can help organizations move beyond awareness-raising toward sustained changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and social norms.
SGBV does not occur in isolation. It is influenced by the social, cultural, economic, and institutional environments in which people live. Community beliefs about gender roles, relationships, sexuality, power, and acceptable behaviour can either contribute to the normalization of violence or support its prevention. The WHO’s RESPECT Women framework identifies gender inequality, harmful social norms, and unequal power relations among the factors that contribute to violence against women (WHO, 2019).
In some communities, violence may be regarded as a private family matter rather than a human rights and protection concern. Survivors may experience stigma, victim-blaming, discrimination, or pressure to remain silent. These attitudes can discourage survivors from seeking help and may allow perpetrators to avoid accountability. UN Women (2021) notes that stigma, fear, and barriers to services can contribute to underreporting and prevent women and girls from accessing support.
Community awareness can help challenge these attitudes by creating opportunities for people to understand what constitutes SGBV, recognize harmful behaviours, understand survivors’ rights, and learn where appropriate support is available. However, awareness activities need to be carefully designed. Messages that are overly general, culturally inappropriate, or disconnected from people’s everyday experiences may have limited impact.
Effective communication should encourage reflection rather than simply provide information. Community members should be able to discuss how harmful norms affect individuals and families, explore the consequences of violence, and consider what they can do to prevent it. The WHO (2019) emphasizes that effective prevention should address underlying risk factors rather than focusing exclusively on awareness of violence itself.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO
One of the challenges in SGBV programming is the assumption that awareness automatically leads to behavioural change. A person may know that violence is harmful and understand that survivors have rights, while harmful attitudes and behaviours continue within the same community.
This demonstrates the difference between awareness and engagement.
Awareness focuses on ensuring that people receive and understand information. Engagement goes further by creating opportunities for people to participate in dialogue, question assumptions, share perspectives, identify barriers, and contribute to solutions. UNFPA (2023) emphasizes the importance of engaging communities and working with different groups to challenge harmful gender norms and promote prevention.
Meaningful engagement therefore requires two-way communication. Communities should have opportunities to discuss issues that affect them rather than simply receiving messages from external organizations. Community dialogues, peer groups, youth discussions, women’s groups, men’s engagement initiatives, religious and cultural leader forums, radio programmes, and participatory workshops can create spaces for these conversations.
However, participation must also be meaningful. Simply inviting community members to attend an awareness event does not necessarily constitute engagement. Communities should have opportunities to influence programme priorities, approaches, messages, and solutions where appropriate. Participatory approaches can increase relevance and ownership because they allow communities to contribute their knowledge and perspectives to programme design (UNFPA, 2023).
Community leaders can have significant influence over attitudes, behaviours, and social norms. Traditional leaders, religious leaders, local government representatives, teachers, health workers, youth leaders, and other respected community figures can play important roles in shaping conversations around SGBV.
However, engaging leaders should go beyond inviting them to attend awareness events. Leaders need opportunities to understand the causes and consequences of SGBV, examine harmful norms, understand referral pathways, and identify how they can use their influence responsibly.
When respected leaders publicly reject violence, challenge victim-blaming, encourage survivors to seek support, and promote respectful relationships, they can contribute to changing community attitudes. Their involvement can also help create more supportive environments for survivors. The WHO (2019) identifies community and relationship-level interventions as important components of comprehensive violence prevention.
At the same time, organizations should not assume that all community leaders automatically have the knowledge or attitudes required to support SGBV prevention. Capacity strengthening is therefore essential. Leaders should understand survivor-centred principles, confidentiality, safeguarding, and appropriate referral mechanisms.
Poorly handled disclosures can expose survivors to additional stigma, retaliation, or harm. Community leaders therefore need clear guidance on what they should and should not do when a survivor seeks assistance. Survivor safety and confidentiality must remain central to all engagement approaches (UN Women, 2022).
SGBV prevention cannot be achieved without engaging men and boys. Men and boys should not be approached only as potential perpetrators or treated as a single, homogeneous group. They are also partners, fathers, brothers, friends, community members, leaders, and potential champions for change.
Effective engagement can create opportunities to discuss masculinity, power, consent, healthy relationships, gender equality, emotional expression, and non-violent conflict resolution. These conversations can help participants examine social expectations that may encourage harmful behaviours while also promoting positive forms of masculinity.
The WHO (2019) identifies transforming harmful gender norms and strengthening equitable relationships as important components of violence prevention. Similarly, UNFPA (2023) highlights the importance of engaging men and boys as part of broader efforts to transform gender norms and prevent violence.
However, engaging men and boys should not result in reducing attention or resources for women and girls who experience violence. Instead, it should complement survivor-centred prevention and response efforts by addressing the broader social and relational factors that contribute to violence.
Sustained engagement is particularly important. One-off sensitization sessions may create awareness, but meaningful changes in attitudes and behaviour generally require repeated engagement, reflection, reinforcement, and supportive environments (WHO, 2019).
Community engagement must always prioritize safety. Women and girls, people with disabilities, young people, survivors, and other groups facing heightened vulnerabilities may experience significant risks when participating in public discussions about SGBV.
Public disclosure of violence can expose survivors to stigma, retaliation, discrimination, or further harm. For this reason, community awareness activities should never pressure survivors to share personal experiences.
Survivor participation must be voluntary, informed, and safe. Organizations should consider confidentiality, accessibility, referral pathways, and potential consequences before implementing engagement activities. UN Women (2022) emphasizes the importance of survivor-centred approaches that prioritize the rights, safety, dignity, and well-being of survivors.
The principle of “do no harm” should guide SGBV programming at every stage. This is particularly important when organizations collect information about violence. Community engagement activities should not become informal data collection exercises where participants are encouraged to disclose sensitive experiences without appropriate safeguards.
Where disclosures occur, facilitators should understand how to respond appropriately and where to refer individuals for specialized health, psychosocial, legal, or protection services. The WHO (2019) emphasizes the importance of strengthening systems and services alongside prevention efforts.
Inclusive engagement also means considering the needs of people who may face barriers to participation because of disability, age, language, location, poverty, or social exclusion. A community engagement approach cannot be considered inclusive if the people most affected by violence are unable to participate safely.
Community engagement becomes more effective when organizations communicate through channels that communities already trust and use. Radio can be particularly valuable in areas where access to digital platforms is limited. Interactive radio discussions, dramas, storytelling, and carefully managed call-in programmes can provide accessible ways to discuss sensitive issues.
Schools and youth spaces can provide important platforms for engaging young people, while community groups, health facilities, religious institutions, and local organizations can serve as entry points for broader awareness activities.
Digital platforms can complement these approaches, particularly when reaching younger populations. Social media campaigns, short educational videos, online discussions, and digital information resources can extend the reach of community awareness initiatives.
However, organizations should consider digital safety, misinformation, privacy, and unequal access. The effectiveness of communication approaches depends on whether they are accessible and appropriate to the communities being reached (UN Women, 2021).
The most effective communication strategy is often a combination of interpersonal, community-based, institutional, radio, and digital channels. Different groups access information differently, and using multiple channels can reinforce key messages while increasing accessibility.
Awareness campaigns are most effective when they are connected to accessible and quality services. Telling survivors that support is available is not enough if they do not know where to go, services are inaccessible, or providers are not adequately prepared to respond.
Community engagement should therefore provide accurate information about available health, psychosocial, legal, protection, and social support services, depending on the context.
Referral information should be regularly reviewed and updated because services, contact points, and operating arrangements can change. Organizations should also avoid promising services that cannot be delivered.
The credibility of SGBV programming depends partly on whether communities see a meaningful connection between awareness, protection, and support. UN Women (2022) emphasizes the importance of coordinated systems and accessible services in supporting survivors and strengthening national responses to violence against women.
If awareness increases but appropriate services remain inaccessible, survivors may be left frustrated or exposed to additional risks. Strengthening referral pathways and coordination among service providers is therefore an important part of community engagement.
There is no single community engagement approach that works everywhere. SGBV interventions must consider local languages, cultural practices, gender dynamics, literacy levels, age, disability, socioeconomic conditions, geography, and access to services.
A message that is effective in one community may not have the same meaning in another. Language and communication styles can also influence how people understand sensitive concepts such as consent, violence, rights, and gender equality.
Before designing awareness activities, organizations should therefore conduct contextual analysis and engage community members to understand local perceptions, barriers, risks, existing support mechanisms, and communication preferences. The WHO (2019) emphasizes the importance of understanding the social and contextual factors that influence violence when designing prevention interventions.
This process can help organizations identify trusted messengers, appropriate communication channels, and potential unintended consequences.
Participatory design is particularly important because it allows communities to contribute their knowledge while helping organizations avoid assumptions about what communities need or how they will respond. UNFPA (2023) similarly highlights the importance of community participation in developing approaches to gender-based violence prevention.
Awareness campaigns are most effective when they are connected to accessible and quality services. Telling survivors that support is available is not enough if they do not know where to go, services are inaccessible, or providers are not adequately prepared to respond.
Community engagement should therefore provide accurate information about available health, psychosocial, legal, protection, and social support services, depending on the context.
Referral information should be regularly reviewed and updated because services, contact points, and operating arrangements can change. Organizations should also avoid promising services that cannot be delivered.
The credibility of SGBV programming depends partly on whether communities see a meaningful connection between awareness, protection, and support. UN Women (2022) emphasizes the importance of coordinated systems and accessible services in supporting survivors and strengthening national responses to violence against women.
If awareness increases but appropriate services remain inaccessible, survivors may be left frustrated or exposed to additional risks. Strengthening referral pathways and coordination among service providers is therefore an important part of community engagement.
Short-term awareness campaigns can generate visibility, but sustainable prevention requires long-term community ownership.
When communities are involved in designing and implementing interventions, they are more likely to see SGBV prevention as a shared responsibility rather than an issue belonging only to NGOs, government agencies, or development partners.
Community ownership can be strengthened by working with existing structures and networks rather than creating parallel systems wherever possible. Women’s groups, youth groups, community health workers, schools, religious institutions, local organizations, and community leaders can all contribute to prevention efforts.
However, community ownership should not mean transferring responsibilities to communities without adequate resources or support. Local actors need appropriate knowledge, skills, tools, referral connections, and ongoing support to perform their roles effectively.
Sustainability also requires organizations to think beyond project timelines. Community engagement approaches should consider how knowledge, networks, partnerships, and local structures can continue functioning after external project funding ends. The WHO (2019) emphasizes the importance of sustained, multi-level approaches rather than isolated interventions when addressing violence against women.
Effective SGBV community engagement also requires strong Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) systems. Counting the number of people who attended an awareness session provides information about reach, but it does not necessarily demonstrate whether knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, or social norms have changed.
MEL systems should therefore consider both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Organizations can assess changes in knowledge, perceptions of gender norms, awareness of available services, attitudes toward survivors, and confidence in seeking appropriate support.
Qualitative approaches such as focus group discussions, interviews, community reflection sessions, and participatory methods can provide deeper insight into how and why change is occurring. Evaluation evidence can also help organizations understand which engagement approaches are most effective in different contexts.
However, evaluation of SGBV interventions must always be conducted ethically. Sensitive information should not be collected simply because it is possible to collect it. Data collection should be proportionate to the purpose, protect confidentiality, minimize risks, and follow appropriate safeguarding procedures.
The United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG, 2016) emphasizes the importance of ethical and professional standards in evaluation, including respect for human dignity and the rights of those involved. These principles are particularly important when evaluations involve sensitive topics such as SGBV.
Evidence generated through MEL should ultimately be used for learning and adaptation rather than reporting alone. If community engagement activities are not producing the intended changes, organizations should use evidence to understand why and adjust their approaches.
At Bodmando Consulting Group, we believe that effective SGBV programming requires a combination of community understanding, meaningful participation, strong safeguards, and evidence-based decision-making.
Our work supports organizations to strengthen the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of development and humanitarian interventions, including programmes operating in fragile and sensitive contexts.
We support organizations through context and needs assessments, programme design, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems, data collection and analysis, evaluations, institutional strengthening, and capacity development.
For SGBV-related interventions, this requires particular attention to survivor-centred and trauma-informed approaches, ethical data collection, confidentiality, safeguarding, and the principle of do no harm. These principles help ensure that evidence generation and community engagement do not unintentionally expose participants to additional risks.
Our approach recognizes that communities are not simply beneficiaries of development interventions. They are important partners in understanding problems, identifying solutions, and sustaining change.
By combining participatory community engagement with strong MEL systems, organizations can generate evidence that helps them understand what is working, identify gaps, and continuously improve their interventions.
SGBV prevention requires more than awareness campaigns. It requires communities to have the knowledge, confidence, resources, and structures needed to challenge harmful norms and create safer environments.
Meaningful community engagement can help transform SGBV from an issue that is hidden, normalized, or treated as a private matter into one that communities are prepared to address collectively and responsibly.
However, this transformation takes time. It requires sustained dialogue, trusted partnerships, inclusive participation, strong referral systems, capable institutions, and continuous learning.
Organizations must therefore move beyond asking how many people were reached and begin asking deeper questions: What did communities learn? Did attitudes change? Are harmful norms being challenged? Are survivors safer? Are services more accessible? What needs to change in the programme?
When community engagement is grounded in evidence, participation, safety, and accountability, awareness can become a pathway toward meaningful and sustainable change.
At Bodmando Consulting Group, we support organizations to turn evidence into action by strengthening programme design, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems, community engagement, and institutional capacity.
Sustainable SGBV prevention begins when communities are not only informed, but meaningfully engaged in creating change.
Bodmando Consulting Group is a feminist international consulting firm
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