In this 5th episode of the UNICEF GBViE podcast, Sunita Palekar Joergensen and Zaman Ali Hassan from UNICEF MENA and UNICEF Lebanon are presenting the Virtual Safe Spaces project that UNICEF has been leading on since couple of years.

In GBV programming, safe spaces for women and girls have been established as a key approach of reaching adolescent girls and providing them with  access  to  Sexual and Reproductive Health (SHR)  information,  links  to  services,  skill-building,  peer  connection,  and  support.  Yet, access to  physical  safe  spaces  is  often  limited  for  adolescent  girls  because  of  security  concerns,  gender norms, and domestic responsibilities. UNICEF has been developing a platform to act as a virtual safe space for adolescent girls to access gender-based violence information. The virtual safe space model is designed to facilitate access to information and services in a way that is safe, culturally appropriate and accessible to adolescent girls, particularly those who face higher levels of marginalization, such as girls with disabilities and married girls. This episode is part of the Innovation series of the podcast.