Sweden signs new agreement with Culture Fund to reduce gender based violence, combat child marriages and promote environmental awareness through transformative arts.
On 9 May, the Embassy of Sweden signed an agreement with Culture Fund in which Sweden will contribute US$1.35 million (12 Million Swedish Kronor) towards Culture Fund’s new three year programme named ‘Culture Actions’.
Sweden’s new support to the Culture Fund is in direct line with its newly adopted five year strategy that gives particular attention to human rights and gender equality as well as environment and climate change. The Culture Actions programme, which will be implemented by Culture Fund and future partners, aims to reduce gender based violence, combat child marriages and promote environmental awareness by harnessing the power of the transformative arts.
”Culture can be a very powerful tool in our box to promote development. Through art and different cultural expressions we can reach out to communities and enhance awareness, stimulate debate and highlight the need for action to combat gender based violence but also to start a discussion around environmental issues and climate change”, said Sweden’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe Sofia Calltorp. Environmental shocks and climate change have also shown to worsen the vulnerability of women and girls and their exposure to gender-based violence in Zimbabwe. The new Culture Actions programme will in response call for artistic interventions that can strengthen women’s knowledge and decision making capacities in environmentally vulnerable communities, and also for call for initiatives that can raise the general awareness of environmental shocks and climate change in Zimbabwe.
“Culture Fund remains a development oriented social change NGO that has worked within Zimbabwean society over the last ten years to change the lives of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans. This new programme marks a new era of partnership between the Culture Fund and the Embassy of Sweden under a renewed model that seeks to achieve greater impact by working with selected creatives and community based organizations to infuse practical innovations into more sustainable development interventions,” said Culture Fund Executive Director, Farai Mpfunya upon signing the agreement.
The new ‘Culture Actions’ will in the near future see the Culture Fund invite submissions from community based organizations and creative agents to encourage greater gender equality within targeted communities, help reduce early child marriages and play an active role in climate change awareness through transformative arts.
“The new Culture Actions programme will build on Culture Fund’s Culture Impacts (2015-2016) and other related programmes. It is one of the Culture Fund’s new thrust programmes; targeting project beneficiaries and designing outcome-results-oriented approaches under a three year project (April 2017 – March 2020).”
