Projects driving sustainable change across Africa
Community-driven interventions connecting immediate development needs to long-term systems change — across public health, governance, livelihoods, child protection, research, and justice.
Active interventions
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Project Summary
CDSJ implemented the CSW70 National Youth Consultation as a self-funded technical and coordination initiative aimed at strengthening youth participation in gender justice, legal reform, and access to justice advocacy. The consultation brought together 30 participants — including adolescent girls, young women, youth representatives, women's rights allies, and civil society actors — from urban, peri-urban, and rural communities across Lesotho.
Background & Rationale
Access to justice remains a major challenge for women and girls in Lesotho, particularly in cases involving GBV, sexual abuse, economic exploitation, and harmful social norms. CDSJ convened this consultation to ensure that youth and adolescent voices from Lesotho are meaningfully reflected in the CSW70 global advocacy process while generating local evidence to inform national justice and legal empowerment efforts.
Key Issues Addressed
- Guardian consent requirements limiting adolescents' access to justice
- Discriminatory school practices framing rape as "teenage pregnancy"
- Weak enforcement of women's marital property and economic rights
- Under-resourced police stations, courts, and prosecution services
- Limited availability of shelters, safe houses, and legal aid in rural areas
- Digital exclusion and weak cyber protections for women and girls
- Inaccessible justice infrastructure for persons with disabilities
Key Recommendations
- Reform and enforce laws and policies to guarantee equal and independent access to justice for women and girls
- Strengthen justice institutions and services to deliver survivor-centred, accessible, and accountable justice
- Invest in legal empowerment, digital inclusion, and disability-accessible justice systems
Methodology
One-day in-person participatory workshop (08:00–18:00) combining plenary sessions, five thematic group discussions, rapporteur documentation, and collective validation of emerging priorities. Thematic groups covered: laws and policies; justice institutions and practices; services and remedies; legal empowerment and rights awareness; and digital and disability-inclusive access to justice.
Results & Significance
This initiative demonstrated CDSJ's ability to independently design, coordinate, and implement a national-level policy consultation linked to a global advocacy process. It generated locally grounded evidence on barriers faced by women and girls in Lesotho and contributed to CDSJ's growing portfolio of self-initiated, evidence-driven social justice programming. The consultation directly aligned with CDSJ's Access to Justice, Governance and Gender, Research and MEL, and Public Health programme pillars.
Project Summary
CDSJ's Child Protection, GBV Prevention, and SILC Support Project is an ongoing self-funded initiative responding to the urgent vulnerability of child-headed households in rural Lesotho. Since April 2025, CDSJ has identified 32 child-headed households across 6 rural communities through household profiling, vulnerability assessment, and community engagement. The project combines child protection, GBV prevention, SILC-based economic strengthening, legal support, school retention, and livelihood development in one integrated community-based response.
Background & Rationale
Child-headed households in rural Lesotho face multiple risks simultaneously — food insecurity, school dropout, GBV exposure, property grabbing, forced servitude, early marriage, and weak access to services. CDSJ designed this project because child-headed households are often treated only as welfare cases, when they require a combined protection, legal, education, and livelihood response. Economic vulnerability and rights vulnerability are closely connected and cannot be addressed in isolation.
Protection Risks Addressed
- Exposure to gender-based violence and survival sex
- Early and forced marriage among girls
- Property grabbing and unlawful dispossession after parental death
- Forced servitude among boys sent to remote cattle posts
- School interruption, dropout, and failure to re-enter
- Weak access to documentation and services
- HIV risk and limited access to prevention information
Project Objectives
- Identify and profile child-headed households based on real conditions
- Strengthen child protection and GBV prevention for exposed children
- Build household resilience through SILC-based economic strengthening
- Support older adolescents into livelihood activity and cooperative groups
- Provide legal and protection follow-up for inheritance and rights cases
- Promote school retention and re-entry for at-risk children
- Generate field evidence for a scalable community-based response model
Ha Mafa SILC Group, Mafeteng — M20,000 direct investment
CDSJ provided M20,000 in self-funded support to a SILC group in Ha Mafa, Mafeteng, which has started an onion and potato farming initiative for commercial-scale production linked to local street vending markets. This demonstrates how SILC groups can move from saving and peer support into structured livelihood activity with real local market potential.
Core Project Components
Household Identification & Profiling
Field visits, community engagement, and vulnerability assessment of 32 households
SILC-Based Economic Strengthening
Savings and Internal Lending Communities as platforms for resilience, peer support, and livelihood preparation
Child Protection & GBV Prevention
Risk identification, protection awareness, referral support, and follow-up
Legal & Rights Protection
Practical support and referral for property grabbing, inheritance, school exclusion, and service access
Livelihood Investment
M20,000 to Ha Mafa SILC group for onion and potato farming — linked to street vending markets
School Retention & Re-Entry
Identifying barriers, engaging actors, and linking education with household protection support
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