Regional and sectoral roundtables
The Initiative has organized several regional and sectoral roundtables which have brought together key actors and policy makers across different sectors and countries to share the Initiative's learning and engage in concrete action towards violence prevention. They have helped establish and strengthen global networks that will go beyond the life of the Initiative to advocate for investments and actions to prevent violence in childhood. In 2015, Know Violence in Childhood organised two roundtables. The first, in July in Brazil, for Latin America focussed on homicide and was organised with the Brazilian Forum for Public Safety along with a higher education institution the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. The second, in September in Kazakhstan for Central Asia, focussed on the institutionalisation of children and was organised with the regional office of Penal Reform International.
In April 2016, the Initiative organised a regional roundtable in South Asia, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in collaboration with South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children (SAIEVAC). Experts from the region discussed the issue of violence experienced by children in the schooling process, and identified emerging lessons from work done across the region by governments and civil society organisations to prevent violence in schools.
In May 2016, the Initiative organised its first sectoral roundtable on Social Protection and Childhood Violence in collaboration with UNICEF Innocenti. This roundtable focused on the various ways social protection programmes can support violence reduction objectives. The roundtable identified some key pathways of impact for social protection programmes to reduce childhood violence but also highlighted the limitations in the available evidence and recommended further investment in developing better methodologies for measurement and impact evaluation.
In October 2016, the regional research network of Know Violence in Childhood, Learning in East Asia and the Pacific (LEAP) convened a meeting 'Developing research networks to strengthen evidence to practice in ending violence against children' in Bangkok, Thailand. An impressive body of work is already available in the region in the form of numerous baseline studies, rigorous systematic reviews and innovative policies and practices. The roundtable began with a review of the evidence on effective strategies that are operational within the region in the context of wider global learning, followed by a sharing of the substantial body of work completed or underway at the participating universities.Participating experts from different universities and international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) recognised the need for informed policy making, prevention and care program specialists, reliable local data from epidemiological research, and improved system-wide capability to establish violence reporting systems.