Letsema: A Contribution to Reducing Gender-Based Violence

All the reports, stories and resources from our project, Letsema.

Book: The Story of Letsema

This book comes out of a participatory research process with Letsema and tells part of the story of how they have contributed and continue to contribute to reducing GBV in the area. It can only tell part of the story because the work of Letsema is rich with many connected threads. This paper looks at how Letsema contributes to changing norms in the Vaal that reproduce GBV and how the group of people who are Letsema have worked the soil from which violence emanates.

Case Studies

The writings in this book tell the story of community members joining together to answer the question: “How can we create a Vaal with zero % gender-based violence?”

The writers are fifteen Letsema community members from townships and informal settlements across the Vaal, and six Gender at Work/ Labour Research Service team members and coaches who supported the Letsema process.

In their writings Letsema community members give a sense of who they are, how they came to be a part of Letsema, how being in Letsema touched them personally, helped them connect with each other and their communities, and what they have been able to achieve

Podcast

In this episode of the Gedner at Work Podcast, we travel to the Vaal – a semi-rural area in South Africa, whose violent past still haunts it. We take a look at Letsema, an innovative community wide effort to combat gender based violence, and negative social norms around women and the LGBT community. We talked to Nina Benjamin and Nispho Twala from the Labor Research Service in South Africa, and found out why the Vaal can be such a violent place, and why the Letsema program was so successful. We also spoke with Michele Friedman, a Senior Associate of Gender at Work, to reflect on the systemic impact that Letsema had.

“I used to solve all my problems with violence especially when it came to these initiation schools. Letsema taught me how to better work with the community and work with many places and find better ways to solve issues in all these communities.”

Listen on Apple Podcasts