Reducing the backlog of maintenance cases, preventing bullying, and increasing sexual offence reporting, such as harassment in the workplace, are just some of the successes of a series of 100-day challenges that the End GBVF Collective launched.

The collective, which has teams focused on each of the six pillars of the gender-based violence and femicide National Strategic Plan (NSP), looked at ways to tackle blockages in the provision of services to gender-based violence victims.

The 100-day challenges are based on international models and are aimed at getting rapid results and producing innovative solutions for problems through collaboration, according to the collective's Candice Ludick.

A team in Bloemfontein reduced the backlog of maintenance cases at courts by more than 80%, Ludick said. This was achieved by prioritising less complex cases and working towards a higher finalisation rate every month (from 50% to 75%).

The team hopes to duplicate this in other parts of the province.

In addition, a team in Tzaneen was able to increase the rate at which victims access legal and psycho-social support by more than 260%. It did this through targeted awareness campaigns, Ludick added.

She said the challenges were aimed at finding local solutions that could be replicated to ultimately create gender-based violence-free municipalities.

The challenges resulted in projects to improve safety through the erection of streetlights, the reduction of incidents of bullying through peer-to-peer support and mentoring programmes, and efforts to address underreporting of sexual offences against minors. They also saw an increase in the reporting of sexual harassment in the workplace after a sexual harassment education programme for people working in the mining sector.

The NSP, which President Cyril Ramaphosa launched in March 2020, makes provision for the establishment of a National Council on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide to ensure implementation of the plan, and it was supposed to be formed within six months.

Women's rights groups previously told News24 they were frustrated by the delays.

The collective is an organisation that was created as a voluntary forum to implement the pillars of the NSP. It has been championing the implementation of the NPS while it waits for the establishment of the council.