To ensure the project supports gender equality and the well-being of MaM Volunteers’, gender and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) were mainstreamed in the project.
GENDER
Migration in West Africa is often represented as a phenomenon that mostly impacts men. However, for many women, migration is a way to increase access to productive assets and economic opportunities. Migration can provide women the opportunity to escape patriarchal social structures and to improve their autonomy and status. When they migrate, women may be more vulnerable to violence, exploitation and abuse along dangerous irregular routes. When it comes to returning to the country of origin very often women experience high social stigmatization due to hardships such as sexual abuse or having to raise children as single mothers.
Migration impacts both men and women to equal degrees; thus it extremely important that women are equally involved in initiatives about migration, such as in Migrants as Messengers. Their participation in the migration discourse is a way to promote positive change in society, strengthen IOM’s mandate, and promote gender equality.
Step by step on how to mainstream gender:
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Nominate a gender focal point – a staff member with relevant experience.
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Create a Gender Working Group within the team to promote inclusive dialogues on gender-related topics.
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Assess gender equality needs and potentialities within the project.
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Develop a gender mainstreaming strategy that considers gender in each project pillar.
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Identify specific indicators for female engagement and design initiatives to achieve them.
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Share lessons learned after implementing gender-targeted activities to help inform the implementation process.
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Produce and share briefs about gender with colleagues and project Volunteers with relevant data and information about gender equality challenges and evolution in the region.
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Use monitoring tools (quantitative and qualitative) to continuously assess performance and address challenges along project implementation.
Featured activities:
Digital Campaign “ The Road to Equality”: For International Women’s Day in March 2022, a digital campaign was created to raise awareness on the impact of gender equality on migration, which included content produced by MaM Volunteers (such as 19 videos, seven podcasts, a blog and a short film). The campaign focused on sharing stories of people that inspired Volunteers and youth in their communities.
Tips for future implementation:
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Create a gender strategy! It is not enough to disaggregate data between males and females. Create indicators and activities that are gender transformative and allocate a specific budget and resources to enable positive change.
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Invest in regular gender equality training for program staff, partners and Volunteers.
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Support female leadership: MaM Volunteers created 20 returnee-migrant-led associations including four female-led of which three have a dedicated mission related to gender equality.
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Celebrate international initiatives such as International Women’s Day and 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based violence. It generates visibility and encourage engagement in gender equality that can be sustained through follow-up activities.
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Create synergies with NGOs, CSOs and other projects within IOM as this can help scale up initiatives and contribute to sustainability.
“Women often do not have the right to education. Women do not speak. A woman is meant to listen even if what she is told affects her; she is to accept it, digest it and live by it. This has made many women stay low for all their lives. This is why I decided to start a women’s migrant returnees’ association called the Female Returnee Forum. Its aim is to support girls and women to be less vulnerable to violence and exploitation. The organization helps their process of healing. - Chylian Azuh, MaM Volunteer, Nigeria
MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health is the foundation for well-being. It is the ability to think, learn, and understand one’s emotions and reactions of others. Migration provokes big changes and affects an individual’s welfare, sometimes positively and/or negatively. Along an irregular journey, people are exposed to many risks. Upon return, more challenges can be experienced in creating new livelihoods. There are uncertainties and often they have feelings of shame, guilt, low self-esteem, sense of failure, sense of loss. The psychosocial well-being and needs of returned migrants remain are a top consideration, and the mainstreaming of a mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) strategy into a peer-to-peer campaign like MaM was crucial.
MHPSS Mainstreaming strategy
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Capacity-building
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Community-based MHPSS training is provided for Volunteers and civil society stakeholders.
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E-learning on Mental Health & Migration Awareness Raising.
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Community engagement :
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MHPSS service mapping and strengthening referral mechanisms.
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Case studies of community-based psychosocial support activities.
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Content Production
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Interview guide on psychosocial aspects of migration experience shared with Volunteers.
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Volunteers created creative content on MHPSS.
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Digital and media engagement
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Access to MHPSS service mapping across West Africa on WakaWell.info.
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Digital campaigns for celebrating World Mental Health Day (10 October).
- Psychosocial support for Volunteers
- Regular focus group discussions facilitated by a mental health professional.
- Research
- A pilot study on the mental health and psychosocial well-being effects of being a MaM Volunteers.
Featured activities:
- Tales around the fire (Senegal)
Storytelling is deeply embedded in West African culture. In this activity, professional storytellers performed migrations stories for a group of returned migrants in the traditional setting around the fire. A professional MHPSS facilitator animated the debate with returnees after the performance. - Body acceptance (Côte d’Ivoire)
Body acceptance is a self-acceptance workshop for women through dance. What the participating women had in common was that their body is, or has been, the object of suffering and judgment. Dance was a way to get out of the daily routine. It allowed them to access the emotional sphere through non-verbal expression. - Capoeira for well-being (The Gambia)
As an art form, Capoeira combines elements of storytelling, singing, dancing and martial arts. The movements and symbolism invite a greater awareness of oneself, one's strengths and weaknesses, and lead the practitioner to more confidence in one's own resources. In The Gambia, Capoeira sessions were organized for returned migrants followed by talking sessions facilitated by an MHPSS professional.
“Although the return was marked by stigmatization from some relatives because of what they called failure, expressing ourselves about our experience allowed us to feel it as a strength by informing about the real dangers of the migration journey” - Diarrassouba Maimouna, MaM Volunteer from Côte d’Ivoire