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No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) — Impact Brief

Introduction

NMNW’s mission is to end sexual violence against women and children globally by delivering a dual-gender sexual violence prevention intervention to boys and girls aged 10-20 in schools and community safe spaces. No Means No is a system of knowledge, strategies and skills that aims to end the cycle of violence by empowering girls to set boundaries and stand up for their rights, and engaging boys to respect and support women and girls. The No Means No violence prevention system combines three components to form a comprehensive sexual violence intervention: 1) 12-hours of empowerment self-defense classes for girls age 10-20, where participants learn verbal and physical skills and strategies to prevent various forms of sexual assault; 2) Two 12-hour curricula for boys focused on reshaping harmful beliefs around gender, sexuality, and positive masculinity, and teaching them skills to intervene when anticipating or witnessing violence; 3) Network referrals to ensure that those who disclose sexual violence receive appropriate legal, medical, and psychosocial support. The No Means No violence prevention approach utilizes the IMpower methodology, which is backed by extensive published research from Kenya and Malawi showing, among other things, that incidence of sexual violence decreased by an average of 47% among program participants.

NMNW plans to achieve scale by training local partners to effectively implement No Means No in a way that allows it to sustain and amplify its impact.  NMNW operates a train-the-trainer model that utilises partnerships with local organisations as a platform to deliver No Means No in new geographies. A Global Training team from NMNW provides training to Instructors recruited by local Implementing Partners who, if they successfully complete the training, are then certified to deliver No Means No to local children and adolescents. By leveraging existing infrastructure (schools and community spaces) and partnerships with mission-aligned local implementing organisations, NMNW aims to deliver programs at low cost and mass scale. NMNW is currently working with partners to deliver programmes in Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa, and seeks to expand to several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2021.

Use of GIF Funds

GIF funding will be used by NMNW to:

  • Launch proactive partnerships in new countries through strategic sourcing. GIF funding will be used to pursue proactive partnerships that enables flexibility to increase technical support and training, add geographic or partner scope to a project, ensure boys programming is included in projects, and set and extend timelines and monitoring where needed;
  • Establish an Innovation Hub in South Africa where NMNW will directly deliver programmes, study the long-term impacts of IMpower on a single community, and test innovative programme modalities;
  • Build a robust Trainer pipeline with capacity support to meet demand for NMNW’s programming and ensure effective replication at scale. This may include adding another Trainer ‘layer’ through identifying top local Instructors that can be certified to train new Instructors, which will support further scale and reduce reliance on NMNW’s GMT teams;
  • Develop a Partner Network and thought leadership platform to disseminate learning, share best practices on scaling partnerships, and contribute to the global discourse on preventing sexual violence. Activities will focus on engaging implementing partners, hosting annual meetings and workshops, sharing research, providing supplementary training and building a communications platform to develop a strong community of practice; and
  • Continue to build organisational capacity to support growth

Objectives

By the end of the grant period, No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) has successfully executed strategic scaling initiatives including expanding to new geographies and launching new proactive partnerships; developing the requisite organisational capacity, structure and systems to support growth and sustainability; applying lessons learned to improve its partnership model and the No Means No system; and developing a stakeholder network to share evidence and best practices.

  1. Scale – Launch strategic proactive partnerships in new countries that are leveraged to maximise learning, impact and scale
  2. Capacitate – Develop organisational capacity, structure and systems to support rapid growth and longer-term sustainability of NMNW including establishing a local presence in Sub-Saharan Africa
  3. Refine – Refine the partnership model through applying lessons learned from new partnerships and developing a robust quality assurance framework which supports scaling IMpower to high quality standards for impact
  4. Share and Influence – Develop a Stakeholder and Thought Leadership Network that functions as a platform to disseminate learning and research, share best practices on social franchise models, contribute to global discourse on sexual violence prevention, and maintain a strong community of practice

Impact to Date

In 2019, NMNW successfully completed the launch of No Means No in Uganda and in collaboration with 4 local Implementing Partner organizations graduated 25,123 girls from No Means No. Pre/post questionnaire results showed that program participants achieved an average 54% improvement in knowledge and attitudes, and 147% improvement in knowledge on how to prevent assault.

In 2020, NMNW launched the boys programming and 13,981 beneficiaries (8,516 female; 5,465 male) were reached with sexual violence prevention skills training delivered by NMNW and its partners in Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Monitoring and evaluation data in mid 2020 showed that the average change in knowledge was 109% or a doubling of knowledge of skills to prevent rape for girls and boys. The average change in attitudes was 68% showing a change in confidence and assertiveness as well as attitudes around gender norms and rape myths. To date, NMNW has provided training to 42,340 adolescents.