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Fencing and restorative justice, youth protection and empowerment
Project
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Project start date
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Status
Ongoing
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Project duration
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3 years
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AFD financing amount
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€ 250 000
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Global financing amount
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€ 540 690
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Location
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Dakar
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Type of financing
AFD is supporting the project of the association Pour le Sourire d’un Enfant which promotes the innovative psychotherapeutic method it has developed through its extensive experience in juvenile justice. The aim is to offer better protection to vulnerable children.
Context
The ERA project is supported by a multidisciplinary team:
- CSOs: Association pour la Promotion de la Santé Mentale and Social Change Factory, the center for citizen leadership;
- National legal and health institutions: Department of Correctional Education and Social Protection, National Prison Administration, Judicial Training Center, National Penitentiary School, and Department of Mental Health;
- Scientific institutions: French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and Institute of Health and Development-UCAD.
Description
The number of children and young victims of forced labor and sexual exploitation is increasing around the world. All this violence threatens their education and is harmful to their physical and mental development. Senegal is not spared from this scourge.
The ERA project aims to tackle this issue and promote a psycho-educational ecosystem based on the Fencing and Reparative Justice method.
The objective is to foster life-skills education and provide conditions for positive personal development that helps empower young people and promotes gender equality.
This educational initiative requires building the capacities of educators and prison officers dealing with minors. A Fencing and Restorative Justice Academy has been set up for this purpose, with the aim of creating a knowledge community around a unique educational initiative.
These good practices will seek to make actors from institutions and civil society aware that innovative and sustainable solutions can be promoted to address the needs for protection and education of minors.
This is what the ERA project is all about!
Impacts
ERA provides a multi-faceted response combining education, training and research to:
- Promote alternatives to the street and detention for 5,000 young peopleStrengthen the psycho-educational capacities of 60 prison officers and specialized educators;
- Reduce gender inequalities by encouraging self-expression in young people and their artistic creativity;
- Produce new knowledge on juvenile justice and young people’s mental health, two gaps in public policies for youth.
