Our Story of Learning for Change: Experiences from the emergency response in Liberia.
As told by Chiseche Salome Mibenge & Abiy Seifu - Episcopal Relief & Development,
Each year, Episcopal Relief & Development facilitates healthier, more fulfilling lives for more than three million people around the world struggling with hunger, poverty, disaster, and disease. The organization works with the Anglican community and other partners to create long-term and community-centered development. Our strategies focus on delivering results in three deeply integrated program areas: Women Children and Climate.
At the heart of our work is effective social behavior change communication. A key example of this is an interfaith behavior change intervention designed to respond to the scourge of violence against women and girls (VAWG). Originally launched in Grand Cape Mount and Rivercess counties in 2015, the project developed gender-based violence prevention and response toolkit for use by faith leaders. Under the initiative, Christian and Muslim faith leaders have been trained to speak out against VAWG in their communities and to more effectively support survivors of violence in settings where governance structures are too weak to deliver essential services. The learning from the first three years led to the expansion and scale-up of the intervention that began in 2018. It now reaches four Liberian counties, with Christian and Muslim faith leaders continuing to speak out and create space for deeper engagement on gender-equitable norms and practices, religion and culture.
Learn more about Episcopal Relief & Development’s work here.
The Storytellers
Chiseche Salome Mibenge joined Episcopal Relief & Development in Fall 2019 as the Director, Gender Initiatives. She provides the organization with leadership on human rights and gender strategy and supports global partners addressing early childhood development, violence against women, gender equity, and climate resilience. For two decades she has worked in the field of human rights education, researching gender and crimes against humanity and developing human rights curricula at Stanford University, City University of New York, and Utrecht University.
Abiy Seifu is a Senior Program Officer at Episcopal Relief & Development. He provides leadership, advisory support, and accompaniment to our partnership programs in Africa in the areas of Early Childhood Development, Gender Equity and supports joint partnership work in the areas of climate resilience and institutional strengthening. Abiy has over 25 years of experience in program design and management, Monitoring & Evaluation, performance measurement, and improvement with a focus on food security and disaster management. He has an MS in Development Management from American University, SIS, Washington, D.C., and an MS in International Economic Relations from Kiev State University.
