Integrated Health Outreach (IHO) brought the message of ending gender-based violence (GBV) to the classroom on Thursday, January 29, 2026, when it hosted two GBV awareness youth workshops, one at the Sir Novelle Richards Academy (SNRA) and the other at the Princess Margaret School (PMS). The workshops, which benefited 39 students overall, are part of the activities leading up to the Gender-Based Violence Walk 2026, which is happening on Saturday, March 7th, and is being organised by IHO in partnership with the Directorate of Gender Affairs (DoGA).
The workshops, held in the morning, included teaching and interactive components as well as a placard-making session where students put their skills to work designing placards for the GBV Walk 2026. The workshop was led by Pastor Karen Germain, a member of the IHO team and an experienced school counsellor. Youth from both schools were taught about the forms that gender-based violence takes, the impact it has, the importance of consent, and why the focus of the Walk is on defending the rights of women and girls.
Gender-based violence is violence directed at a person based on their gender. Women and girls experience GBV due to the unequal power relations between the genders and negative social attitudes that promote or tolerate the mistreatment of women and girls. This can take the form of physical violence, sexual violence, verbal abuse, digital violence, violence from an intimate partner and sexual harassment, among others. These things can happen to anyone, regardless of their gender. Still, women and girls experience them disproportionately as a consequence of being in societies where the attitudes and gender dynamics normalise such abuse towards women and girls.
Globally, UN Women notes that the most common form of violence experienced by women is physical violence inflicted by an intimate partner, saying that around the world, “At least one in three women is beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime.” In the Caribbean, UN Women has highlighted statistics that show that the region grapples with an even higher rate than the global average, with 46% of Caribbean women experiencing some form of gender-based violence.
As it relates to the workshop, IHO Communications Officer, Kieron Murdoch, noted, “We aim to communicate simple concepts around what is right and what is wrong, and we try not to overwhelm students with too much information. We held these workshops in 2025 as well, ahead of last year’s GBV walk, and found them to be an effective way to reach young people and mobilise them. In fact, nearly 15% percent of participants last year were between 11 and 17 years old.”
The students who participated at the SNRA were between 12 and 14 years old, while a smaller group who took part at the PMS were between 15 and 17 years old. Murdoch added that the IHO has found that incorporating arts and crafts into the workshops is one of the best ways to make the message stay with the students, saying, “Similar to last year’s workshops, the placard-making seemed to be what students most enjoyed overall, and we are happy to be able to allow them to demonstrate their creativity in that way.”
IHO, in partnership with the DoGA, will host the Gender-Based Violence Walk 2026 on March 7th, 2026, starting at 2:00 PM from the Botanical Gardens. Registration is open to all ages, free of cost, and participants get a free t-shirt while stocks last. Walk registration was launched on January 7th, 2026. Residents can now sign up online for the event by going to www.ihoab.com and clicking the registration banner at the top of the page.
The GBV Walk campaigns in 2024 and 2025 have also advanced the ongoing project by IHO and DoGA to establish a women’s shelter in Antigua and Barbuda. This shelter has been planned as a women-led social enterprise involving a beeping farm to generate sustainable funding. With growing public support for greater action on gender-based violence, the government, in October 2025, gave approval for a lease of 5 acres of public land for the establishment of this shelter.
Now in its third year, the GBV Walk is Antigua and Barbuda’s largest public advocacy event on gender-based violence. The walk attracted more than 2000 participants in 2025. Both IHO and DoGA are confident that the number will increase sharply on March 7th 2026.
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