The untapped potential of addressing violence against children and women through parenting programs

Alessandra Guedes

Gender and Development Manager (violence against children and violence against women) , UNICEF Innocenti

Alessandra has dedicated over 20 years of her professional life to promoting children’s and women’s rights and health, including working intensively to end violence against children and against women. She joined UNICEF Innocenti - Global Office of Research and Foresight in 2019 to lead the development of a research programme to address key issues and constraints to achieving gender equity within child protection, with a particular focus on addressing the interlinkages between violence against children and violence against women. Prior to joining UNICEF, Alessandra served as the World Health Organization’s Regional Advisor for the Americas on family violence prevention (2009-2019) and as the co-chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative’s Coordinating Group, a role she continues to occupy. Alessandra holds degrees from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and from the George Washington University. She is based in Florence, Italy.

Beatrice Ogutu

Executive Director, ICS-SP

Beatrice is dedicated to raising awareness, increasing understanding, developing solutions that disrupt the cycles of violence, poverty and inequity in Africa. Her work focuses on creating authentic connections, fashioning spaces, and inspiring actions that expand enabling environments for children, young people and women to dream more, learn more and become more. Beatrice has nearly two decades of experience in non-profit management, and has broad expertise and experience in strategic planning, leading and managing multi country programs, teams and grants, cultivating and managing strategic partnerships, designing and delivering development programs and trainings, advocacy and policy influencing and resource mobilization. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Christine Kolbe-Stuart 

Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF

Christine’s work at UNICEF is focused on the prevention of violence against children and against women. She has worked across sectors and agencies leading gender-transformative policy, research and programming to address the social, structural and behavioural drivers of inequality. In her current role, Christine is leading UNICEF’s efforts to integrate Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) informed approaches within policy and programming to  prevent violence against children and against women. She represents UNICEF within the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP) and the Technical Working Group for INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children. She is based in New York City at UNICEF’s NY-HQ.

Clara Alemann

Director of Programs, Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice

Clara is a gender specialist with over 20 years of experience in social science research, program design, implementation, and evaluation of governance and social development programs to advance gender equality. In the past decade her work has focused on the integration of gender and violence prevention within social development programs in the areas of early childhood development, youth development, sexual and reproductive health, parenting and caregiver support, as well as engaging men and boys in reproductive, maternal, and child health interventions. She has worked with international development organizations (the United Nations Development Programme, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank) and is a mentor of The Prevention Collaborative , where she has provided technical accompaniment to organizations seeking to strengthen their work on family violence prevention. Clara has a master’s degree in Public Policy from the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is based in the Hague, the Netherlands.

Lina Digolo

VAW/C L ead, Prevention Collaborative

Lina is a paediatrician and clinical epidemiologist with over 12 years of experience in health system strengthening, research, policy, and service delivery. She has provided technical advice on designing and implementing projects to ministries of health and local organisations in various African countries. Lina is passionate about fighting for gender equality and addressing social injustice. Her dream is to see a world where women and children are safe, healthy, and happy. She has contributed to international policies, training curricula, and service delivery standards on violence against women and their children and has been involved in the scale-up of response services to over 120 public health facilities in Kenya. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya .

Ruti Levtov

Evidence & Influence Lead , Prevention Collaborative

Ruti is a gender and public health specialist with more than a decade of research and programmatic experience on gender equity and violence prevention. She has worked across multiple sectors—including health, education, parenting, and economic empowerment—with a particular focus on developing and evaluating gender-transformative and male-engagement interventions in low- and middle-income countries. In recent years, her work has focused on designing and disseminating research (including programme monitoring and evaluation, in-depth qualitative studies, national surveys, and randomised controlled trials) and on ensuring that research findings and lessons learned are shared broadly, targeted to different audiences, and relevant to both programme development and policy advocacy. She is based in Vienna, Austria.