Oxfam’s Creating Spaces To Take Action on Violence Against Women and Girls project (2016-2021) aims to reduce violence against women and girls, including the prevalence of child, early and forced marriage in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines. The project is implemented by local partner organizations, with support from Oxfam country offices and Oxfam Canada.

In communities where violence is normalized, recognizing it as a social problem is the first step towards changing mindsets, norms, attitudes and behaviours. Following the socio-ecological model on violence prevention, the Creating Spaces project applied a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder approach, at the individual, household, community and societal/institutional levels, to ignite change and prevent violence against women and girls and child, early and forced marriage.

Fostering young people’s awareness, participation and leadership was instrumental in mobilizing change to prevent violence against women and girls and child, early and forced marriage. Youth were driven to act more than any other constituency. Through their bold efforts, they succeeded in delaying marriages for countless adolescent girls and boys, and influencing policy and legislative changes. This document highlights project learnings on how to effectively engage youth to embolden their leadership on women’s and girls’ rights, and some of the concrete youth-led outcomes on violence against women and girls and child, early and forced marriage across the countries that participated in Creating Spaces.