Cape Town - Ons Plek, a child and youth-care centre in Mowbray, has for the past 34 years run a 24-hour residence programme for street girls. It provides education, trauma counselling, family counselling, and parenting programmes.
In Philippi, there are three programmes that identify children at risk of dropping out of school, living on the streets and becoming involved in gangsterism and its accompanying rape.
Director, Pam Jackson, said: “On the streets of Philippi and Cape Town are gangs. Girls who have dropped out of school in Philippi get involved as protection and often have to be gang raped as an initiation into the gang.
“Before community projects opened we got about 50 new girls a year from Philippi. Since opening 14 years ago, we have been able to prevent girls in that community from dropping out.”
About 34 girls are sheltered at any given time, with 66 a year on average.
Weekly programmes are run with in-residence girls, and 76 girls and boys in Philippi, with their parents.
“Gender-based violence is largely not recognised. Everyone knows about violence but it is assumed to be a natural phenomenon meted out usually by men and boys on women and girls.
“We had to start talking about bullying and gradually move to gender-based violence concepts before we could deal with trauma of our participants and self images.
“We continue to run these programmes because the attitudes are deeply held and because victims and potential victims get aggressive come back if they stop participating in the victimhood,” Jackson said.
Ons Plek social worker Lee-Anne Dolley said many of the girls were not aware of gender-based violence.
“They had misperceptions of what violence towards women meant. Many witnessed this with their own mothers and thought this sort of behaviour was normal.
“The regular gender-based violence group work has empowered girls to understand the broader concept of gender-based violence and to stand up for themselves. It has also allowed them to recognise what they had been through and can address this in counselling,” she said.