CEWHIN, GERI Unveil Mobile App To Provide Psychological Support For Survivors
THE Centre for Women’s Health and Information (CEWHIN) in collaboration with Gender and Environmental Risks Initiative (GERI) with support from US Embassy Abuja has unveiled GBV Tête-À-Tête mobile app.
The GBV Tête-à-Tête mobile app is CEWHIN’s first technology product with intent to bring freely to millions of Nigerians the knowledge and skills for psychological first aid that benefits survivors of GBV and enhances GBV response capacity for individuals.
“More challenging is that almost 45 percent of the women who had experienced violence never sought help or told anyone about the incident. With a vision that seeks ‘a society where women and girls are empowered to realise their mental, social and physical wellbeing’, the overarching goal of CEWHIN’s implementation of this intervention was community-level capacity building for increased SGBV awareness, prevention, reporting, and access to mental health support services by women and girls in Benue state.”
She added that the GBV Tête-à-Tête mobile app was developed to offer users multiple benefits for knowledge, social connect and community support, “it also offers capacity development for prospective community-based psychological first aiders and psychological support to GBV survivors.
“There is a new tendency to try to involve men in the workshops, in the conversations as well so that men also see this as an issue that applies to them.”
“When a woman is abused verbally by her husband or when a man is verbally abused by his wife, it is a challenge to see the emotional impact of this on people.” She however appreciated CEWHIN and other partners for their positive impact towards moving the state forward.”
As this app is used, CEWHIN is committed to listing more civil society organisations working in Benue State and subsequently other states on the app to make a robust directory of experts who work on gender-based violence, to aid quicker and more efficient responses to issues of violence against women and girls within the state. The GBV Tête-À-Tête mobile app offers psychological support, free capacity building on becoming a psychological first aider and a robust referral directory. The mobile available on CEWHIN’s website – www.cewhin.com/tete-a-tete-app and Google PlayStore provides a survivor-centred approach towards providing psychological support for survivors of violence against women and girls.
Benue State Commissioner of Health and Human Services, Dr. Joseph Ngbea, who was represented by the Director of Public Health, Dr.Terna Kur welcomed the technology innovation by CEWHIN and expressed total support from the Ministry of Health on the project.
