The House of Peace: piloting how to break the multigenerational cycle of child marriage
The HER CHOICE partners Dalit and ICDI – International Child Development Initiatives are piloting in Bangladesh an approach to break the multigenerational cycle of poverty and child marriage.
In Majidpur, one of the villages targeted by the Her Choice Programme, the House of Peace has been established: it is a hub where multi-sectoral services are offered to married and unmarried young women and men, with the involvement of all generations (children, grandparents and in-laws).
Just to mention some of the services offered at the House of Peace:
- life-skills training courses to meet the challenges of everyday life at community level, which benefitted so far over 600 participants – mostly women;
- psychosocial counseling for individuals, couples, families which has helped already about 200 people;
- Sexual & Reproductive awareness activities and health services, that have assisted over 150 persons so far;
- early childhood care and development services for young children and their family members;
- micro loans and self-help groups for child marriage victims, widows, separated couples of Dalit & marginalized communities.
The House of Peace has been now implementing the above mentioned activities in full-swing under six departments for over 10 months, during which the community members have participated with great enthusiasm and cooperation. The main idea is to break that cycle of poverty and child-marriage that most of times is passed on from one generation to the other.
After evaluating the impact of such pilot in the next future, we will evaluate whether to extend this approach to other HER CHOICE projects worldwide.
