BAHO

The BAHO program, short for Building and Strengthening Healthy Households, takes its name from the Kinyarwanda imperative form of the verb "to live." The project’s mission is to provide couples with an opportunity to live in a safe household free from domestic violence, using the Indashyikirwa model. CARE Rwanda directs and funds the initiative, which is implemented with assistance from RWAMREC. The Indashyikirwa couple curriculum, co-designed by CARE International Rwanda and RWAMREC, aims to achieve this goal. This curriculum has effectively improved women's economic situations by reducing intimate partner violence (IPV).

The program involves women's economic empowerment activities and engages men as allies for gender equality. It also uses digital messaging and mass media/radio to raise awareness. The program works to shift attitudes around violence and control of women's mobility and financial assets. It promotes positive behaviors such as communication, positive masculinity, shared household chores, and joint decision-making. Indashyikirwa has achieved scale and expanded beyond small pilots through government and civil society support.

The Indashyikirwa model operates on various levels:

1. Household Level: CARE and local partners provide couple curriculum training, promoting healthy and equitable relationships among couples. This training reduces gender-based violence and increases women's economic decision-making power. Women participants are selected from VSLAs and bring their partners for couples training.

2. Community Level: The program engages women in VSLAs outside their homes, increasing access to resources through savings and small businesses.

3. Village Level: Indashyikirwa collaborates with opinion leaders and the government's "Friend of the Family" community-based volunteer network to organize regular community-level dialogues that shift norms around gender-based violence.