RESOURCE: UN Women Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence Against Women & Girls
The UN Women Global Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women and Girls is an online resource in English, French and Spanish, designed to serve the needs of policymakers, programme implementers and other practitioners dedicated to addressing violence against women and girls. The Centre is an initiative of UN Women, bringing together the valuable contributions of expert organizations and individuals, governments, United Nations sister agencies, and a wide range of relevant actors. Part of the overall effort is encouraging shared ownership of the site and ongoing partnership-building for its continuous development and sustainability.
The primary purpose of the Global Virtual Knowledge Centre is to encourage and support evidence-based programming to more efficiently and effectively design, implement, monitor and evaluate initiatives to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. To achieve this, the Global Virtual Knowledge Centre offers a ‘one stop' service to users by making available the leading tools and evidence on what works to address violence against women and girls. It draws on expert recommendations, policy and programme evaluations and assessments, and fundamentally, on practitioners' experiences from around the world.
The site offers users:
step-by-step guidance on ‘how to' work with specific sectors, groups or areas of intervention
proven and promising approaches
recommended training and other practical tools for implementation
a roster of specialized organizations, by country and languages
summaries of evaluations and key findings
links to key sources of data and other on-line resources
an emerging observatory of leading initiatives; and
a calendar of major events and training opportunities.
The more than 750 products and features available in some 50 languages will be expanded and updated on an ongoing basis to ensure that practitioners have timely access to current information, knowledge and resources. Every few months, an expanding number of programming guidance modules will continue to be developed and added for specific issues and population groups.
In addition to functioning as a user-friendly central repository, the Global Virtual Knowledge Centre will offer practitioners enriched opportunities for knowledge sharing and communication through forthcoming interactive spaces.
We look forward to your feedback and to hearing from you, as well as your own expert contributions. Your voice counts in helping us to mobilize continued support and expansion of this shared global resource.