Localised Implementation and Multi-stakeholder management with the VPPIC project

The Violence Prevention for Peaceful and Inclusive Communities (VPPIC) project is a German technical cooperation initiative that commenced in July 2024, with an initial duration of three years. The VPPIC project emphasizes early intervention for violence prevention, especially in the realms of early childhood development (ECD), school, and caregiving environments, focusing on the prevention of gender-based violence. The project aims to facilitate a multi-stakeholder and systemic approach, enhancing the structural conditions necessary for evidence-informed, gender-responsive, and where possible, gender-transformative implementation of early violence prevention interventions throughout South Africa. Commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the project collaborates with South African partners, including the Department of Basic Education. GIZ is an international cooperation enterprise dedicated to sustainable development, with operations worldwide. Its corporate objective is to improve people"s living conditions sustainably. The VPPIC project focuses on early violence prevention, addressing intergenerational cycles of violence within caregiving environments for children, early childhood development centres, and school settings. It also examines the intersections between violence against women and children. The project targets children aged 0-12 and their caregivers, including parents, relatives, educators, community workers, and their structures such as schools, ECD centres, and extracurricular programs. Adopting a life cycle approach to violence prevention is essential for early intervention and achieving long-term impact. The project"s objective of gender-responsive early childhood violence prevention will be primarily achieved through the implementation of three focal areas. First, localised implementation aims to develop evidence-informed and integrated models to enhance early prevention across a range of care services in a comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable manner at the local level of municipalities or neighborhoods. These examples and models can offer practical, tangible inspiration for expanding early prevention efforts and strengthen children"s self-efficacy and resilience. Second, improved multistakeholder coordination between different ministries and civil society networks for gender-responsive early violence prevention, considering learnings from the localised implementation, will lead to enhanced use of synergies, potential funding, and targeted lobbying and coordination of relevant stakeholders. Third, strengthened institutional capacities of state and civil society actors responsible for early violence prevention will improve the capacity for planning, implementing, and monitoring approaches for early prevention services, ensuring more effective and sustainable outcomes. Through these outputs, and in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and other relevant state and non-state actors in the field, VPPIC aims to support sustainable and comprehensive early violence prevention approaches. These efforts are intended to create safer and more inclusive communities and contribute to mitigating gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa. The VPPIC project adopts a multisectoral and systemic approach to capacity building through networking and dialogue promotion, technical, process, and organizational advice for networks and state actors involved in early childhood and primary school care, integrating gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches in advisory services, and promoting trust-building and cooperative relationships.