During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, organizations around the world are called to engage in dialogue and come together to prevent gender-based violence.
At MenCare, we’re working year round with fathers and couples in 25 countries to promote active parenting, and to prevent violence. On Facebook and Twitter during these 16 Days, which begin on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25) and conclude on International Human Rights Day (December 10), we will be highlighting 16 MenCare countries where our partners are working with men to promote caring fatherhood and to prevent violence.
We’re reaching men through initiatives like Program P, which engages men globally in active, non-violent fatherhood from their partners’ pregnancies through their children’s early years, and MenCare+, a four-country, targeted initiative that includes group education with fathers and their partners on gender equality and caregiving, as well as group therapy with men who have used violence.
We believe that through group education and counseling, young men and young fathers have a chance to discuss and challenge what it means to be a man, and to adopt skills that prepare them to have non-violent, respectful relationships with their partners and to raise their children without using violence.
“Based on long standing experience of Equimundo in Brazil, as well as extensive surveys and research, it is known that children will copy the behavior of their parents,” says Gary Barker, Director of Equimundo, Co-Coordinator of MenCare. “Men who have witnessed their fathers using violence are twice as likely to also use violence. In contrast, men whose fathers treated their mothers with respect, whose fathers participated in care when they grew up, and whose fathers did not use violence are likely to do the same. What men do as fathers every day can either create cycles of violence or interrupt cycles of violence, “ said Gary Barker.