EXECUTIVE director of Eve for Life Joy Crawford has lauded the US Embassy’s Women History Month pitch competition as a vehicle that charted the path for meaningful work in the lives of women across Jamaica.

Crawford’s organisation received a grant of US$20,000 in 2018 for its project titled ‘Mobilising Communities to end sexual abuse and the sexual exploitation of adolescent girls and young women in Jamaica’.

During a round-table discussion held at the US Embassy’s Old Hope Road premises last Thursday, Crawford explained that the issues Eve for Life addresses are often viewed as the elephant, yet alone jungle in the room because of how complex and multifaceted they are.

“The issues that we address are very, very sensitive, they are very complexed. They cross so many barriers, from legal to social to family – the whole gamut,” she explained, adding that receiving the grant was timely in order to take the work they have been doing to another level.

“After a number of years working with survivors of sexual violence and getting the language to move from victim hood to survivor hood, we started to realise the need for a stronger working community. The grant we got moved us into our community work. So our first objective was to work with two communities — Barrett Town in St James, and a community called Truro over in Westmoreland,” she said.

But the choice of these communities are far from ad hoc. According to Crawford, these are areas that saw alarming levels of sexual abuse and exploitation of adolescent girls and young women.

The result — high levels of HIV among young girls and rising cases of incest.

“We began to explore the link between sexual violence in our young girls and HIV. We began to understand the dynamics. If a girl at age 14 is living with HIV, it’s one of two things. Either she was born with HIV or she got it through sex. For the high number of girls we have in our country who we say are living with HIV, when you do the analysis a number of them would have got infected as a result of rape,” she pointed out, adding that a programme Eve for Life runs had over 100 girls living with HIV who were teen mothers.

Further, Crawford said work in western Jamaica uncovered issues relating to incest.

“We followed the breadcrumbs and started looking at families, communities. We started asking how is this so prevalent? What are we seeing and what do we do? That was the basis of our work. We started working in communities where a lot of our clients were coming from,” she said.

In addition, Crawford mentioned that many of these areas in western Jamaica were referred to as cane belt communities, which contributed to sexual violence.

“These are communities with no burglar bars, no fence, no separation going on, just some houses put down. There are stories of the girl going outside, in the outside bathroom having a bath, the man walk past, rape her, keep going. The family is in the house, she is not going to tell anyone, [so] shi wash off, come in and gone [then] show up at clinic and she is positive [HIV]. Some of these communities are razed, you almost wonder if you are in Jamaica. Truro is one of those communities that fall into that cane belt where we had seen situations,” she said.

Crawford said to make an impact, they had to find ingenious ways to bring out community leaders and empower them to implement change.

Now two years since the injection of funds from the US Embassy, Crawford says the impact has been like a wildfire.

“Currently we have 42 ‘Nuh Guh Deh’ ambassadors. These would be men and women of all different make up in their communities who are gatekeepers. This ranges from the man who rub out him hand, to youth leaders, someone in a police youth club, the man on the corner who knows everyone…we find these persons and work with them,” she said.

Crawford explained that over 80 per cent of these ambassadors are men and come from a cross section of communities to include Truro, Barrett Town, Denham Town, Tivoli Gardens, Fletcher’s Land, Parade Gardens, Seaview Gardens, Maverley, Content Gardens, and communities in Clarendon.

The Eve for Life executive director shared that part of the aim is to change the narrative with males and violence against women.

“In the communities we set up forums and report issues they may hear. In the WhatsApp group of community leaders we share information and we create a response. The project propelled us into other things. We train men who are effeminate, former bad men, even men involved with women who are survivors of rape;” she said, adding that each community has a girl who is a survivor as an advocate doing work alongside the males.

She added: “This led us to talk about involvement of men in the issue of gender-based violence and sexual abuse from a different space. These are men who say because we have been engaged and understand, we can transform. These are men who say we reject the label of ‘a so man stay and men are toxic’. They are pushing a totally different narrative.”

Moreover, Crawford maintained that the community empowerment has created a better environment for change to take place.

“People are talking about it, they are hearing more and they are responding,” she said.