A good number of men around Mangochi town earn a living as Taxi Bicycle Operators (TBOs) business (locally known as Kabaza) around the town to make a living.
The work of Kabaza operators involves a lot of travelling within the town and around its townships without fixed schedules. This automatically places the TBOs into the category of people who are hard to reach with information.
As such, there is need to make deliberate efforts towards ensuring that TBOs have adequate information about various issues that affect them. YONECO has embarked on reaching TBOs in various spots where they meet customers in order to get their attention on prevention of Gender Based Violence (GBV), HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
There are certain prevailing sociocultural norms which give men a sense of dominance and limit girls and women’s bodily autonomy.
As such, this increases the prevalence of child marriages, unintended teen pregnancies, GBV, HIV infections and the STIs. As such, meaningful involvement of men in dealing with such issues is key.
Currently, a total of 342 TBOs have been engaged in various awareness and information sharing sessions since March, 2022.
