5.5 Mainstreaming safeguarding through all communications
Safeguarding should be mainstreamed through all organisational communications. This promotes ownership of a safeguarding agenda across all departments of an organisation, as well as all the organisations we engage with.
If we put safeguarding at the centre of all our work by ensuring inclusion and participation of our beneficiary groups, the delivery of our programmes will be much safer for all persons concerned. This includes mainstreaming safeguarding in advocacy,
campaigning, media and marketing. In this way we promote ownership of a safeguarding agenda across all departments of our organisation, as well as all the organisations we engage with.
To do this, organisations need to demonstrate strong leadership and direction in promoting and modelling a safeguarding culture. For example, by showing how safeguarding is fostered in the workplace and in staff training with a clear focus on prevention
and early intervention. Staff can be trained to recognise the signs of abuse/neglect and empowered to act on concerns.
When working with beneficiaries, supporting them in understanding their rights and becoming more confident in promoting them can reduce opportunities for abuse. Providing a trusted point of contact for people to make disclosures can lead to earlier intervention.
Engagement with wider social networks through online instant messaging tools can build resilience, mitigating against abuse.
However, online messaging carries its own confidentiality risks, which need to be considered carefully. People with disabilities may report through drawing, through actions, and through their family and friends who have personal ways of communicating
with them.
Safeguarding can be made more robust when engaging with other organisations by promoting open dialogue where the views, wishes and needs of beneficiaries are heard, respected and acted upon across the partnership.
Engaging beneficiaries in safeguarding
Watch the video below to hear about some of the ways that Plan International and its consortium members have supported the voices of boys and girls to ensure the organisation is held to account particularly during Covid-19.
MERCY NDABAMBI: Hi. I’m Mercy Ndabambi. The SAGE safeguarding coordinator. And I’m with Plan International Zimbabwe. The Supporting Adolescent Girls’ Education Project is funded by UK Aid through the Girls Education Challenge. They are providing accelerated
learning and life skills to out-of-school girls, aged between 10 and 19 years old.
I’ll start with the girls and boys. They’ve been engaged through awareness raising sessions, whereby they’ve been taken through the safeguarding rules that should be adhered to by project staff and volunteers within the project. They also are made to
identify abuses so that they are able to see when a breach has been met. They also undergo the reporting mechanisms training, so they should know how to report when they witness or experience an abuse. They are also engaged within the projects,
in the risk assessments of events, whereby they also identify the risks that they may actually face in certain events. And we come up with mitigations. To ensure the safety of our participants we have modules whereby we’ve got safeguarding messaging.
We actually have bulk messages that are being sent to their phones, and also face-to-face training, where they are actually interacting with the volunteers, with the project staff to raise awareness on various issues to do with safeguarding.
At management level, we actually monitor through reflection meetings to check on progress against each action. Secondly, we also add consortium level, or quarterly reflection meetings. That’s where we are actually discussing with the wider team on what
they are actually seeing and noticing on the ground, or what they are getting is feedback from the communities, from the girls and the boys. Then from the girls and boys themselves, if we receive a case, we then also then ask them why maybe they
chose a certain mechanism, maybe just to check, in general, whether they tried to use another mechanism and it did not work properly for them. Just to check that they are able to actually reach us if there’s a case.
For to start with we’ve come up with standard operating procedures, whereby we are standardising how things are done, how we are going to be engaging with the girls and boys during this COVID period. So, we have developed pathways whereby some are actually
using the telephone to actually continue learning, because education cannot wait because we are within a pandemic. Then also have another pathway, the door-to-door strategy where we have girls who are pregnant, girls who have got small babies,
girls who have got chronic illnesses, girls with disabilities who then cannot go to the small group sessions, they actually then are engaged through the door-to-door strategy.
Then we also have this small group approach, whereby those who are able to go and meet, interact with other learners in the volunteers actually do so. We are sending SMSes on how they can take care of themselves during this COVID period, when they are
going out to meet people wear your masks. Or, they can also even be prepared mentally, because lockdown situations really can be stressful. So, we actually sending those SMSes to support the girls. We are also raising awareness for reporting mechanisms,
giving changed operation times during lockdowns. So, we actually did also send out how they can actually reach us when there is any abuse that would have taken place.
The number one lesson that we have learnt as a project is sustainable safeguarding measures, which should include community structures, whereby we will identify, as a project, which structure should we work with. Another lesson that we learnt is actually
working with girls and boys, ensuring that they actually know about your safeguarding policies. That way they are able to hold you up to account when there’s a breach, the importance of mainstreaming safeguarding within the whole programme. So
that it does not become a standalone thing but it’s something that is actually being practised within the whole programme, within the whole consortium. That is another lesson that we actually learnt through implementing SAGE project.
Safeguarding in media and marketing
In media and marketing advocacy campaigns, case studies are powerful tools to communicate messages and organisational success. But using them comes with risks for beneficiaries, which need to be assessed and managed.
Watch the video below in which the organisation, Witness, discuss how to ensure that ‘do no harm’ safeguarding measures are used to reduce the risk of re-traumatising survivors and to ensure an empowering process.
Trigger warning: the speakers in the video are survivors and activists.
KATHERINE HULL: It can be incredibly empowering for a survivor to share his or her own story. It can be cathartic. For some, they may really want to help others, and by sharing their story, it can be a great way to let other people who are struggling,
you know, let them know that there is a way forward and that they can recover from this crime.
KATLYN LEWICKE: It’s suddenly this feeling of not being alone. And it’s suddenly having a feeling of this experience that hurt me can help others.
ELANA NEWMAN: We know that trauma survivors, particularly in cultures, which are most cultures that stigmatise sexual violence and shame sexual violence, speaking out is a way of sort of fighting through that cultural disgust, that cultural stigma, and
claiming one experience and uniting with other people who’ve had that experience.
ALAIN KABENGA: And when are you giving the testimony, it’s going to bring also others, as survivors, who are still hiding because of shame and fear. When they will see their fellow survivor, a fellow survivor, or be noticed during this same situation,
can also come out of the shame and the fear.
RUTENDO MUNENGAMI: If recorded on camera, people will find out about our experiences and will help us with ideas on how to deal with our situation, so that it does not happen again.
MORA FERNANDEZ: We’re breaking the silence. And that’s what I want to focus on. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of anger and injustice out there, but these kind of things, for me, are this kind of projects gave me hope and empower me to keep on going
for myself, for the survivors, for the ones that are not here anymore, and for the ones that, sadly, are coming.
KATE RUSH-COOK: My advice to filmmakers and journalists who are filming survivors is just to try and put themselves in the shoes of that person. Forget that you’re used to having the cameras around and the lights around and think of it in that person’s
perspective.
KATLYN LEWICKE: In order to avoid being disempowering to a survivor, I think it’s really important to just keep in mind that this isn’t a story and it’s not just a piece of news or a piece of information. It’s someone’s deepest, darkest feelings. It’s
their most secret emotions, and it’s probably taken them so much time and effort to be able to just admit it to themselves, let alone to consent to sitting down with someone, who could be a perfect stranger, in front of a camera and record an
interview that could be broadcast to who knows how many people.
ELANA NEWMAN: So, when conducting these kinds of films, I think it’s really important to do your homework. Think about the purpose. Think about, is it worth doing, given the amount of potential strain this person can go through? At the time, give the
person as much control as possible. Conduct a very thorough informed consent with them, and also talk to them about language, things that you might do, things that you might not do that will put them at ease or make them more uncomfortable.
NANCY SCHWARTZMAN: I think sort of the most important thing an interviewer can keep in mind is to do no harm by interviewing this person and approaching this person and getting their story, and being as collaborative as you possibly can so that this
is not a take kind of experience for the person, that it’s an exchange and that you’re really honouring what they’re doing by telling you their story.
Below is a checklist to support case study development and to safeguard those involved:
Undertake a risk assessment.
Make sure you are telling a story the beneficiaries are comfortable with you telling, and that you are not disclosing any confidential information.
Seek written informed consent from the individual or community. You will need to think about how to keep a record of their consent as sometimes written consent is not possible.
Ensure that the case study includes no names or other personal identifiers.
Tell the individual or community how the case study will be used and disseminated as part of gaining their consent.
(Source: Witness, 2021)
The use of language is critical to convey an organisational message. It should be supportive and non-judgmental and should not put anyone at risk. For example, throughout this course we have spoken of ‘survivors’ of SEAH rather than simply ‘victims’,
as the term ‘survivor’ is more likely to encourage individuals to seek help when they need it.
When communicating with those gathering case studies, including journalists, it may be necessary to explain the terms you use and encourage them to do likewise, in order to foster an empowering positive change.
When engaging with the media and building marketing campaigns, images and video are often used because these are more impactful and engaging than just words. But care should be taken when featuring children, vulnerable people or beneficiaries, as harm
may result.
