Men’s Agenda for National Development (MAND-Salone) is a community-based organization working with men and boys on preventing violence against women and girls, through sexual reproductive education and economic empowerment. The organisation started in 2010 in Kabala in the Koinadugu District, northern province of Sierra Leone.
MAND-Salone form and train Male Action Groups (MAGs), on gender-based violence prevention and conflict management at the community level. These MAGs serve as agents of change and ambassadors of peace both in the family and in the community as a whole. MAND-Salone also works in schools through their gender equity movement in schools project. In these groups they encourage school children to conduct focus group discussions about gender-based violence, sexual reproductive health, bullying, and conflict resolution techniques, so as to promote peace and harmony among them in the school.
Activities
Major activities of the organization include, but are not limited to:
- Trained 70 men on gender-based violence prevention in three chiefdoms, with funds from Medicos Del Mundo.
- Trained and engaged 100 students from four secondary schools in Kabala on violence prevention and bullying.
- Conducted three community meetings in three chiefdoms on gender-based violence prevention, especially at the family level and the community, for about 350 people.
- Trained 250 women in 2015 on Ebola prevention coupled with gender-based violence at the family and community level. The project was sponsored by UNMEER.
- Trained 25 teenage girls in the Mongo Chiefdom in tailoring and cloth weaving under our women and girls empowerment project.
- Hosts the Koinadugu District Gender based Violence Advocacy Network (K-GAN) secretariat in the district.
- MAND-Salone is the secretary for the Koinadugu Security and Justice Advocacy Network (KoSJAN).
- MAND-Salone's executive director served as the secretary general for the Koinadugu District Ebola Taskforce from 2014 to mid 2015.
