Fountain of Life was recently invited to a Communication for Development (C4D) Violence against Children (VAC) Orientation Workshop at UNICEF. It was a two day workshop that took place from 8^th to 9^th March and the theme was “Protect and Care: Violence is not a solution.”

The goal of the workshop was to strengthen the C4D capacity of Child Protection NGO partners on planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of strategic communication for behavior and social change on violence against children in 10 districts. The specific objectives of the workshop were for the Child Protection VAC Program partners to be able to understand and apply strategic communication planning, implementation and monitoring principle actions, to define effective and efficient communication methodologies/approaches/strategies/activities at individual, community, organizational and institutional level and finally to develop and finalize NGO C4D plan of action on violence against children.

It was a very productive workshop were UNICEF program partners like FOL, YONECO, Action Aid, Plan Malawi and so forth met, learned from each other especially about several projects each of the partners are running. Among the projects are One stop center program (where FOL provides trauma counseling among other services to survivors of sexual assault), Safe school Program by Action Aid, Children’s corner, Community Victim Support Unit and Diversion to mention a few.

The program partners were introduced to the new brands of the VAC service providers that people can identify with and that help to generate demand for utilization of Child Protection (CP) core services. The specific of the new brands are to increase awareness of the branded CP services, increase reporting, increase access to services and to mitigate against after effects of abuse such as HIV, unwanted pregnancy, trauma and life time consequences such as drug abuse, suicide thoughts. All of the new brands and logos have been translated to vernacular languages for all people to identify them easily. For example One Stop Center is “Chikwanekwane” which literally means “One Stop center” - Provision of comprehensive services, including health, social welfare, police and legal support, to survivors of sexual, physical and gender-based violence in one confidential and child-friendly location.