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Good practice Imported

One Man Can — Sonke Gender Justice's Community Mobilisation Campaign Against Gender-Based Violence

South Africa · Cape Town · See the South Africa profile · See the Cape Town profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 55% 63/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Sonke Gender Justice's One Man Can campaign mobilises South African men and boys through workshops and community action against gender-based violence. A 2012–2014 cluster-RCT found it shifted men's attitudes but did not significantly reduce their violence perpetration.

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Men aged 18-35 in intervention villages attending at least one workshop (2012-2014)
0.53 (95% CI 0.24-1.16, non-significant)
Adjusted odds ratio, women's IPV victimisation (intervention vs. control) (2012-2014)
One Man Can — Sonke Gender Justice's Community Mobilisation Campaign Against Gender-Based Violence

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Sonke Gender Justice
Period
2006–present
Keywords
gender-based violence prevention, community mobilization, masculinities, HIV prevention

Context

Sonke Gender Justice's One Man Can campaign, launched in Johannesburg and Cape Town in November 2006, uses multi-day workshops, trained community mobilisers and local advocacy to engage men and boys in preventing gender-based violence and HIV-risk behaviour, and has since been adapted in other African settings including Sudan.

Results

A cluster-RCT in 22 villages of the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance site (Mpumalanga, South Africa) found more than a third of men aged 18-35 in intervention villages attended at least one workshop, with a statistically significant improvement in men's self-reported gender-equitable attitudes and a non-significant trend toward lower IPV victimisation among women (adjusted odds ratio 0.53, 95% CI 0.24-1.16).

Conclusions

The trial found no significant reduction in men's self-reported violence perpetration — the programme's central target outcome. Earlier qualitative work documented shifts in participants' accounts of fatherhood, but relied on retrospective self-report without a control group. Some widely circulated figures (e.g. that 50% of participants 'took action' against GBV) could not be traced to a locatable primary evaluation and are not used here.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Trained community mobilisers, Sonke Gender Justice programme staff

Conditions for success

  • Multi-day, workshop-based engagement rather than one-off messaging
  • Trained local mobilisers embedded in communities

Common failure modes

  • No significant reduction found in men's self-reported violence perpetration, the programme's central target outcome

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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