Challenging and changing deeply entrenched social attitudes and behaviour that support and maintain inequality and violence against women is neither easy nor instant.

It is especially hard as the cycle of violence and social exclusion is a continuum and affects women throughout their lives – at one or many stages in their lifetime – as female infants, children, adolescents, and adult and elderly women.

‘We Can’, however, believes change and the capacity to end violence against women is within the grasp of each of us. 

People do change given a choice and opportunity; when they recognise something as their own problem, and feel both that another way is possible, and that they themselves are capable of taking it. 

‘We Can’ encourages people to find their own solutions to violence against women, make their own choices, and carry it forward at the pace they determine.

It does not presume to offer solutions as much as provide stimulus, encouragement, networks, and the campaign identity as aids for change.

The focus is on creating an environment in which violence against women is not tolerated, and where those who have committed violent acts see a positive opportunity and reason to change. 

Large numbers of ordinary men and women called Change Makers (people who actively encourage positive behaviour towards women within the communities they live and work by providing alternative social norms) are involved in a person-to-person chain reaction of change to attain a critical mass, so as to evolve an organised mass movement, and transform existing power relations in communities, institutions, and the society.