Source: Unite to End Violence Against Women
If you intend to plan, implement and monitor campaigns for advocacy and social change, the Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women and Girls (VKC) is the place to go for guidance.

The Centre is a unique global knowledge initiative, managed by UN Women, that provides expert guidance, practice examples, training and programming tools on ending gender-based violence.

It currently offers resources in English, French and Spanish on the following topics: Programming Essentials; Monitoring and Evaluation; Campaigns; Health, including HIV; Safe Cities; Men and Boys; Legislation; Justice; and Security/Police.

The Campaign module, launched this week, is  dedicated to campaign communications, from the crafting of messages to the use of print, audio-visual and electronic media. The module offers state-of-the art tools and draws on practice case studies from around the world.

Launched two years ago, the Centre has become the ‘go-to’ on-line resource for policy-makers and practitioners.  Its 8,500 users span more than 200 countries and territories, and 45 languages, and use the site between two and 16 times per month, as found in a recent survey.

“We are happy to see that programme implementers around the world are the main users of the Centre, followed by advocates, researchers, service providers, knowledge managers and policy makers, explains Dina Deligiorgis, manager of the Virtual Knowledge Centre. “Of particular note is the increase in service providers, who have become the fourth largest group in the last year, and government partners who have more than doubled”.

Nearly 70 per cent of registered members represent low and middle income countries, mostly from Latin America and Africa.

“This is another indicator that we are hitting a large part of our target audience”- says Deligiorgis-. “We are serving those that often lack access to the global evidence-base because of language or location and that might otherwise be hard to reach for capacity development.”

Recent feedback received from users demonstrates that the Centre has supported:

-  Developing public policies and legal reforms (Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea);

-  Costing national plans (Cambodia, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Seychelles and others);

-  Educating students on men and gender equality (Kenya);

-  Training providers (Kurdistan, Iraq), judges (Europe) and police (Papua New Guinea);

-  Developing zero tolerance programmes for sexual harassment in the workplace (South Africa);

-  Supporting acid crimes survivors (Cambodia, Nepal, Uganda);

-  Developing radio programmes (Colombia).

The platform offers a fully searchable database of over 800 top-recommended tools, which can be filtered by language, country, topic and category. It also has an emerging roster of organizations addressing violence against women from around the world that will be greatly expanded this year along with additional tools and programme modules on Stopping Violence before it occurs: Primary Prevention; Providing Safe and Accessible Shelter; and Addressing Sexual Violence in Conflict/Post-conflict and Emergency Settings.