Empowerment Programmes help Girls Break Free of Violence One such empowerment circle is a five-member group called Girls of Quality. The group is involved in quail bird production. For 25-year-old Abigail Gunzaro, life had been full of hard work and daily challenges. She used to rise early morning and carry out her work task on her parents’ home. Abigail lives in Kambira Village, in Bindura District’s Ward 4. But, after joining the group in March 2016, the women are becoming empowered and are less likely to become GBV survivors. The situation of Abigail is exemplary for many villagers in rural Zimbabwe. It is the primary reason why the GBV project works with women and adolescent girls to provide them with livelihood programmes to support resilience and positive coping mechanisms to enhance broader prevention and reduction of GBV. Girls of Quality is one of those groups that was formed by project beneficiaries to improve people’s livelihoods through income generating projects. The project helps young women like Gunzaro rethink their livelihoods as a business. The aim is to support community-based initiatives to change or to mitigate the effects of harmful social norms as well as longer-term programmes to address underlying causes of child marriage, which are one of key areas of focus of the government’s GBV strategy. Gunzaro was one of the first people to join the quail bird farming project. Like many rural women in Zimbabwe, she had little access to economic opportunities outside of subsistence farming. She says the group gets $70 monthly, which is fair income in rural Zimbabwe. With the income, the group can help underprivileged pupils in the area with school fees and buy feedstuff for the birds. This represents a new agribusiness opportunity for the women, as they are producing the birds commercially for the first time. To invest in developing agribusinesses, the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development, is establishing links with banks to access loans to grow women businesses. The women also receive training in business skills, including record keeping. “This new knowledge to look at quail production as a business, and the training in record keeping, have changed our lifestyles, ‘’ said Abigail. “By investing in the development of agribusinesses, women will have a more consistent source of food and income throughout any given year, ‘’ said Govhati. “In the long-term, these income generating activities help communities increase income-earning opportunities, thereby reducing incidences of GBV against adolescent girls and women survivors of GBV.”