1st First Pidgin English Seminar on Sexual Violence: A Novel Sociocultural Approach

Right:Prof. Nora Sveaass|Joyce Ojokojo|Elisabeth Landgal

The first pidgin English seminar on sexual violence is a novel strategy incorporating intersectionality and aiming to more effectively meet survivors/victims' sociocultural and mental health needs. It will be hosted online in collaborations with the Health and Human Rights Info (HHRI), Oslo, Norway. 

Social context, relationality, inequality, social justice, power and complexity are key characteristics themes of intersectionality I take into cognizant when designing interventions. Intersectionality is an analytical and evaluation tool for understanding  society's complexities like gender, sexuality issues, feminism, human rights, identity politics, immigration, diversity or neoliberalism, which are  generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways (i.e., power with its four interconnecting domain: interpersonal, cultural, disciplinary and structural complexities-Hill-Collins and Bilge, 2017).

If you are working with or assisting survivors of gender-based violence, sexual violence or involved in training of helpers working directly with survivors, this seminar is for you. Access to mental health services are critical aspects of the recovery for rape survivors. It has however emerged that access to psychologists, psychiatrists and other health professionals is limited or absent in conflict, disaster or emergency situations. For rural or hard-to-reach communities it is a double jeopardy given the wide illiteracy and knowledge-gap is wide. They face marginization in accessing information to health, personal , national matters and other is disseminated by mainstream in the lingua franca. 

HHRI is a reliable data base for information dealing with mental health, enabling health professionals and others working with people exposed to human rights violations in disaster, war and conflict areas access additional resources.

Pidgin and creoles have historically existed with various lingua franca. For example, Nigerian Pidgin have its roots in contacts between multilingual coastal communities, Portuguese merchants, the Dutch and the English. Pidgin is "a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication, perhaps for trade"...Holmes,1989.

The Event 

This1st Pidgin English seminar will be held online on Monday 16th, December 2019. Between 5-7 PM Nigerian time. Registration Form and Flyer is accessible via the links.  

What makes this seminar different from others?

• This is the first Nigerian pidgin English seminar on Sexual Gender Based Violence (GBV) (others Arabic, Russian, Spanish)
• The seminar focuses on improving skills in providing psychological support for GBV, especially sexual trauma survivors

Who can attend?

• Helpers supporting survivors of GBV and sexual trauma in times of disasters, conflicts and emergency situations, and in places where access to health professionals, psychologist or psychiatrist expertise is limited.
• Helpers training other helpers/groups of helpers who need self-study materials

Who produce the seminar content?

• A team of mental health experts from with many years of clinical, field and research experiences developed effective      tools to empower helpers of GBV survivors 
• This seminar is made possible by HHRI through collaborations by Professor Nora Sveaass, Elisabeth Landgal and Joyce Ojokojo  (my humble self). We plan to host a 3-day follow-up training with certificate award in the nearest future.