EVE Project

Improving the evidence around preventing violence against women in high-prevalence settings.

Project description

In the world’s highest prevalence settings, two out of every three women will experience physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner or stranger in their lifetime (World Health Organization, 2013). However, research on violence prevention in these settings is limited. Further evidence is needed on the interventions that work to prevent violence in high-prevalence settings.

Taking a multidisciplinary approach from psychology, political science and global health, the Evidence for Violence prevention in the Extreme (EVE) Project explores the community, national and global factors that have contributed to higher rates of violence in some parts of the world, taking a detailed look at these processes through two case studies in the Peruvian Andes and Samoa.

Local communities are directly involved in co-designing the project and building evidence around violence prevention as part of the research team. Specific activities include co-creating ethical guidelines with community representatives, understanding mechanisms of violence reduction through peer-to-peer interviews, designing a survey that informs local practices, and co-creating an intervention.

The close engagement with communities as a central part of this project is a pathway towards reducing violence against women by starting meaningful conversations at a local level, breaking down social norms that silence those experiencing violence, and encouraging communities to take ownership of the problem through local action.

Collaborations and partnerships in LMICs

Close engagement with communities has been a central part of the project, providing a pathway towards reducing violence against women and encouraging communities to take ownership of the problem through local action. Local communities have been directly involved in co-designing the project and building evidence around violence prevention as part of the research team.

Local non-governmental organisations (including the Samoa Victim Support Group (SVSG), the National University of Samoa (NUS) and Hampi Consultores (Peru) were involved from the early development of the grant proposal and have been integral in shaping project activities.

The aim of the EVE Project is to co-design activities to prevent violence in collaboration with local village representatives who are selected, trained, and supervised by SVSG and Hampi. As such, UCL’s role has been as an academic partner for the local organisations who have a great deal of autonomy in designing and implementing project activities for their local context.

The benefits and impacts of the project activities to LMICs

Specific activities include co-creating ethical guidelines with community representatives, understanding mechanisms of violence reduction through peer-to-peer interviews, designing a survey that informs local practices, and co-creating an intervention. Benefits, impacts and outputs to date include:

• Building local research capacity by training 20 Samoan village representatives and 10 mentors to conduct interviews with community members about how violence against women is being addressed at a local level. These interviews have started community conversations about violence and its reduction, which have been reported in the Samoan media
• Bringing together a group of 10 female village representatives from the indigenous community of Amantani (Peru) to discuss their experiences of violence and propose solutions
• Dissemination of project findings through research publications (BMC Public Health, The Lancet Public Health), the media (Samoa Observer), Twitter, and a UCL webpage
• Working with local partner organisations to build their own research capacity through active participation in research publications
• A series of information sheets providing an overview of project activities (available via the project webpage).