Training of Soccer Coaches and Managers:
CEEC with support from DKA Austria conducted a four days’ training for soccer coaches and managers from Kikuyu Sub – County on how they can embrace positive masculinities as a way of preventing and appropriately responding to gender based violence. The training took place from 31st January to 3rd February 2017 at the Victorian House, Kikuyu. The 26 young men who participated in the training were drawn from football teams based in five wards in Kikuyu Sub – County namely, Karai, Sigona, Nachu, Kikuyu and Kinoo.
The training was informed by the fact that the perpetrators of gender based violence in Kikuyu Sub County fall under the youth age bracket. Under the project, CEEC has trained two previous groups of young men in 2014 and 2015 respectively and this training was building on that work. The training helped the young men to start making a connection between flawed masculinities and gender based violence. They also began to understand how serious the problem of male disempowerment is and how it leads to a host of problems for men, women and children. By the end of the training, the young men were able to appreciate that violence of any kind is not an expression of manhood but rather, it stems from disempowerment. Another achievements was that the Kikuyu network of male champions against gender based violence had acquired 26 new members!