Global Reach: Grantee Partners

Yayasan Savy Amira Sahabat Perempuan

Context: 

The National Survey on Child and Teenager Life Experience (2021) showed that 8 of 100 girls and 4 of 100 boys aged 13-17 years and living in urban areas had experienced sexual violence in their lifespan. Friends or peers were most likely to become the perpetrator^[1]. The Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection of Indonesia identified 8,830 children as victims of sexual violence in 2021^[2], which is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. The most recent annual documentation report released by the National Commission on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (KOMNAS PEREMPUAN, 2022) reported that numbers of GBV cases in educational settings have gone up. 35% of incidents happened in higher education, 16% of them in Islamic boarding schools or religious-based schools, and 15% of them in secondary education (high schools or vocational schools). According to the report, sexual violence is the most common type (87,91 %). The numbers need to be seen considering the severe under-reporting the world over, where the degree of power imbalance between the perpetrators and victims substantially reduces the probability of reporting. GBV has serious impacts on the lives of children and young people, with both short- and long-term consequences to their physical and mental wellbeing. Children with GBV experiences are also prone to revictimisation in their future lives.

Organisation: 

Savy Amira was founded in 1997 and has been operating for 25 years. The organisation focuses on supporting women in the city of Surabaya and nearby cities in East Java province, who are struggling with problems or uncertainties in their lives, suffer from GBV, but also from dating and domestic violence. The three core activities include: 1) Case Handling: the team provides psychosocial intervention, legal services and financial support in cases where survivors require it for interim living arrangements and medical expenses. With the pandemic, they also offer online counselling. 2) Community Strengthening Support: they run several community empowering programmes and in particular a healing garden programme where they create a community garden together as way of healing and support. 3) Research and Training: with their strong feminist ideologies, they provide sexuality education training for university students and a programme on self-respect and non-violence for elementary and secondary school students, offer trainings for other organisations part of a collective on GBV which is focused on legal drafting, and carry out research and evaluation of government services. Their newest programme also addresses mental health of young people. 

Current grant: 

EMpower's first grant to Yayasan Savy Amira Sahabat Perempuan (Savy Amira) will build a safer environment and respond to sexual and gender based violence (GBV) in schools and universities reaching 658 marginalised young people (410 aged 10-14, 216 aged 15-19 and 32 aged 20-24) as direct programme participants of which 50% are girls and young women and 152 survivors with young dependents. This will be done through their 4 component SAFE programme which will: 1. Build school rules/regulation for sexual violence prevention and response, 2. Create a supporting social environment for student survivors of GBV by training peers to increase their understanding about the issue of SRHR and GBV, and to enable them to perform an initial response, 3. Respond to GBV involving young people who are survivors or secondary victims of GBV and older women with young dependents and 4. Enable young peers and caregivers to practice self-care to prevent secondary trauma. The programme allows the ESEA portfolio to expand its focus on survivor-centric support for GBV within our focus on SRHR. It also takes an eco-system approach and has been intentionally designed to be scaled up to Surabaya city level.