Bandebereho — Gender-Transformative Fathers' and Couples' Programme

Bandebereho ("role model" in Kinyarwanda) is a gender-transformative group education programme for expectant and current fathers and their partners, developed by the Rwanda Men's Resource Center (RWAMREC) with Promundo/Equimundo and the Rwanda Biomedical Center as part of the global MenCare initiative.

Over 15 weekly sessions, facilitators work with couples on gender and power, fatherhood, communication and decision-making, intimate partner violence, caregiving, child development, and male engagement in maternal and reproductive health.

The programme was delivered to couples across four Rwandan districts as part of a cluster-randomised controlled trial comparing 575 intervention couples to 624 comparison couples.

21 months after the programme, women in the intervention arm reported physical violence at 33% versus 57% in the comparison group, and sexual violence at 35% versus 60%. Men in the intervention group also reported doing significantly more unpaid care work (roughly one hour more per day) and were more involved in antenatal care. The trial was published in PLOS ONE (Doyle et al., 2018), and a six-year follow-up in eClinicalMedicine documented sustained reductions in violence.

Since its 2014 launch, the programme has engaged over 1,700 couples directly, and its curriculum has informed Rwanda's national parenting and gender-based-violence-prevention programming as well as MenCare's fatherhood work in over 50 countries.