Gender Violence Recovery Centre

GVRC provides FREE comprehensive medical and psychosocial care for survivors of gender-based violence across East & Central Africa while advancing GBV prevention through advocacy and awareness.

📞 Need help? Vision

A society free from Gender Based Violence

Mission

We are a centre of excellence in the prevention and management of Gender Based Violence

Purpose

We bring back meaning to the lives of survivors and their families

GVRC is com­mit­ted towards demand-driven service delivery and thus seeks to ensure quality and comprehensive treat­ment, recov­ery, reha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion of all sur­vivors. Over­all since its incep­tion in March 2001, the cen­tre has pro­vided free and com­pre­hen­sive med­ical treat­ment and psy­choso­cial sup­port to over 55,000 survivors. Until very recently GVRC was the only cen­tre that pro­vided FREE med­ical and psy­choso­cial sup­port to sur­vivors of gen­der based vio­lence in East and Cen­tral Africa. The sta­tis­tics have also been used to influ­ence key national ini­tia­tives includ­ing the enact­ment of the Sex­ual Offenses Act 2006, estab­lish­ment of the other recov­ery cen­tres and the deci­sion by the com­mis­sion of inquiry into the post elec­tion vio­lence (Waki Com­mis­sion). Cour­tesy of Recover, GVRC has pre­served evi­dence and infor­ma­tion cru­cial to bring­ing those respon­si­ble for the vio­lent acts to justice. GVRC has also trained police offi­cers coun­try­wide to man­age gen­der friendly desks at their assigned police sta­tions, in order to enhance han­dling of cases. GVRC in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of Kenya has now introduced GBV pro­to­cols which have now been incor­po­rated into the Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence – Nurs­ing degree cur­ricu­lum. This enables nurses, who are the first point of con­tact in most cases to man­age sur­vivors of GBV effi­ciently; by enabling them to have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of gen­der and its rela­tion­ship to health in order to man­age gen­der related health problems. Through its best prac­tices, GVRC has mod­eled a one-stop cen­tre and has built capac­i­ties of ser­vice providers in dif­fer­ent regions. This has enabled them to make man­age­ment of GBV timely, acces­si­ble and com­pre­hen­sive. Such cen­tres include Cen­tre for Assault and Recov­ery in Eldoret (CARE) sit­u­ated at the Moi Teach­ing and Refer­ral Cen­tre, the Coast gen­eral hos­pi­tal recov­ery cen­tre, Gen­der Based Vio­lence Recov­ery Cen­tre (GBVRC) at the Keny­atta National Hos­pi­tal, Taita Taveta Dis­trict hos­pi­tal, Biafra Clinic in East­leigh Nairobi, Jinja dis­trict hos­pi­tal and Mlago hos­pi­tal in Kam­pala Uganda. GVRC remains a refer­ral cen­tre for spe­cial­ized man­age­ment of GBV cases from all over Kenya. For Instance, the Kenya Red Cross has been a key part­ner in assist­ing sur­vivors from the hard to reach areas unreached by GVRC. GVRC sim­i­larly remains the cen­tre that dif­fer­ent GBV ser­vice providers, look up to in terms of capac­ity build­ing and wealth of expe­ri­ence. Access to Justice
Since its incep­tion, GVRC has had doc­tors, social work­ers and coun­selors attend court to give expert evi­dence and pre­vent med­ical and psy­choso­cial reports of clients served at the cen­tre. Pre­sen­ta­tion of med­ical reports has been highly appre­ci­ated by the police and courts and today it is gen­eral prac­tice that the Nairobi Women’s Hos­pi­tal med­ical reports are admis­si­ble in court and have lead to con­vic­tions. Nairobi
province and its envi­rons has been assigned only one police sur­geon who fills P3 forms and tes­ti­fies in court, a prac­tice that has been quite over­whelm­ing for him and has raised cred­i­bil­ity con­cerns. GVRC’s inter­ven­tion has alle­vi­ated the bur­den of the sur­vivor in queu­ing up for med­ical exam­i­na­tion and report by the police sur­geon and foots the costs tagged to med­ical reports and doctor’s tes­ti­mony. GVRC is also one of the few orga­ni­za­tions that enjoy an admirable rela­tion with the police and other enforc­ing agen­cies. 65% of GVRC cases are referred by the police and all res­cues are car­ried out in con­junc­tion with the police and/or provin­cial admin­is­tra­tion offi­cers. Counselling Style
Unlike most coun­sel­ing ser­vices that only tar­get the sur­vivors, GVRC extends its sup­port to both the sur­vivors and the fam­i­lies (fam­ily ther­apy) hence its slo­gan “sup­port­ing sur­vivors and fam­i­lies to heal” GVRC also pro­vides group coun­sel­ing to cater for var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal needs of the sur­vivors. The cen­tre hosts, r**e, domes­tic vio­lence and chil­dren sup­port groups which help sur­vivors share their expe­ri­ences in a group, know that they are not alone and they make each other strong. GVRC has excel­lent child coun­sel­ing rooms with trained play ther­apy pro­fes­sion­als an aspect that’s unique to the cen­tre. Gender Violence Monitoring Unit (GVMU)
GVRC is one of the pio­neer cen­tre that devel­oped a com­put­er­ized data man­age­ment sys­tem on GBV in Kenya. The sys­tem named “Recover” was coined from the centre’s brand name recov­ery cen­tre to sym­bol­ize restora­tion of sur­vivors after vio­lence. Recover was estab­lished in 2005 sup­ported by UNFPA. Over 16, 000 cases have been doc­u­mented and ana­lyzed using this sys­tem. GVMU records on a daily basis the expe­ri­ences of GBV sur­vivors who visit the cen­tre and all its branches. The unit has attracted researchers from all over the world, the UN agency reports on GBV, gov­ern­ment reports and stu­dents learn­ing about GBV. Cour­tesy of Recover, GVRC has pre­served evi­dence and infor­ma­tion cru­cial to bring­ing those respon­si­ble for the vio­lent acts to jus­tice. The mon­i­tor­ing unit’s expe­ri­ences is also part of the key com­po­nents that advised UNFPA sup­port for a national GBV mon­i­tor­ing unit hosted by the National Gen­der Com­mis­sion. A one-stop centre
Whilst GVRC appre­ci­ates the impor­tance of hav­ing all the sur­vivors’ needs addressed at one stop, the cen­tre under­stands that to pro­vide all needed GBV ser­vices in one sin­gle place; there is need for proper refer­ral sys­tem. GVRC embraces strate­gic part­ner­ships to com­plete the man­age­ment cycle of a sur­vivor, all at one stop. For instance, GVRC will ensure a client is accom­pa­nied to a part­ner shel­ter home as opposed to let­ting clients search for homes; an advo­cate is on board for fur­ther legal advice and links the sur­vivors to a part­ner micro-finance insti­tu­tion. Gender Friendly Services
GVRC’s ser­vices respond to the needs of female and male sur­vivors. Due to the nature of the vice, cer­tain sur­vivors pre­fer to be assisted by ser­vice providers of a cer­tain gen­der. GVRC’s team com­prises male and female ser­vice providers and gyne­co­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tion pro­vided as a pri­mary ser­vice. The hos­pi­tal has a gen­der friendly client service/reception desk that is non dis­crim­i­na­tory with all patients only explain­ing their ail­ment to the doc­tor in the exam­i­na­tion room. GVRC also pro­vides prac­ti­cal needs such as tem­po­rary shel­ter, food, san­i­tary tow­els, dia­pers and clothes. Strate­gic needs include cre­ation of aware­ness on GBV/HIV with a Com­pre­hen­sive Care Clinic (CCC) that helps both men and women. All GVRC-NWH ser­vice as guided by the prin­ci­ples of pri­vacy and con­fi­den­tial­ity,


Working with Men
GVRC sta­tis­tics show that 90% of the per­pe­tra­tors are men. This how­ever does not trans­late to all men being bad instead it chal­lenges the soci­ety to include men to fight the vice. GVRC has embraced involve­ment of men a strat­egy to address GBV/HIV by tar­get­ing male dom­i­nated sports such as golf to
cre­ate aware­ness and the Kenya Seven Rugby team mem­bers being ambas­sadors of GVRC assist­ing the cen­tre to reach out to more men.