Early and Forced Marriages

Introduction

The project “To raise awareness on – stop early and forced marriages in Sri Lanka and support advocating for policy changes in child marriages” is a one month project which conducted a social media campaign to increase public awareness on early and forced marriages and to support advocating for policy changes in child marriage in Sri Lanka. This project included posters, infographics, video documentary and virtual discussions about early and forced marriages. The local languages (Sinhala, English, Tamil) used as the medium for the posters to reach more audience.

Objectives

The main aim is to raise awareness of the general public, especially the youth about the negative impacts of early and forced marriages. Since the victims of this issue are young people, it is believed that this should be addressed immediately to secure the future of youth as well as to improve sustainable social development. This project also focused on the fact that the importance of youth engagement in dialogue to end early and forced marriages in Sri Lanka. The use of social medial as the platform for this project was to conduct a more youth inclusive project regarding this matter.

Who Involved

International Youth Alliance for Peace (IYAP) with the support of the Foundation for Innovative Social Development (FISD) and Men Engage Alliance Sri Lanka (MEASL) conducted this project throughout the month of March. Gothamee Kaushalya Narangala, a research intern of IYAP designed the posters and coordinated this project with the immense support of the Administrative Assistant of IYAP Miss Kasuri Pathirana and Accounts Assistant Miss Christina Paul. The interns of IYAP also supported this project by participating in virtual discussions and video documentary as well.

For more information and get involved – visit IYAP website