The laughter between Christine Angeyo and Christopher Olum was enough to tell that their homestead is peaceful. In their residence at Bakara Parish, Koro Sub County, Omoro District, the two always share house chores.

During our visit, we found Angeyo washing clothes as Olum cleaned the chicken coop.

“We do this every day,” he said, later adding: “we complement each other in all aspects”.

Traditionally, men in Acholi like many other communities in Uganda are not known for house chores let alone basic home management. However, a new wave of change is working against these culturally-embedded attitudes and beliefs.

In the Bakara community, the men are direct participants in home management and reproductive health choices of their women. They are involved in family planning decisions, child spacing, maternal and neonatal health.

“We work with our wives on family planning, child spacing among other things. So, it has helped us to know the appropriate family size we can manage,” Olum explains.

The “complimentary” home management that Olum passionately talks about is rapidly gaining momentum in Omoro and other districts of the region, and is being accelerated by renowned northern gender rights campaigner Gulu Women Empowerment and Development and Globalization (GWED-G).

Men here were previously known for social protection. The day-to-day running of a home was typically a woman’s domain, that even when not engaged, they rather kill the hours of the day at a drinking joint.

“You realize that most of the burden of running a household was left to the woman who actually is not culturally recognized as the owner of the home, but looked at as a subordinate,” explains Geoffrey Oyat, a Senior Programme Officer at GWED-G.

Olum lived in this world during the first 10-15 years of his marriage. Yet when the war trauma of the morethan two decade Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency reigned in, he, like most men in this community slid into alcohol addiction. This escalated violence.

“Every time he came from drinking late at night, the children and I had to hide,” Angeyo explains.

This region has posted the highest level of domestic violence in more than a decade.

According to the Uganda Police Annual crime report of 2022, Aswa region registered the highest number of Gender Based Violence Cases.

In Gulu alone, the report reflected 1147 physical assault cases reported as of 2022 and the number of survivors standing at 271 in the sub county of Koro community, where the couple resides.

With these soaring cases of gender-based violence in the region, GWED-G thought it was important “to capitalize on men-only clubs in different communities, to create a model run by the men for men to end the violence”.

The approach involves the creation of role model men known as Coo Makwiiri within the community: older and discerning in character, who are trained in rights and basic freedoms to counsel and lead other men in creating peaceful homesteads.

Each Coo Makwiiri is in charge of 10 households, where he mentors, inspires, counsels and guides men in the selected households on how to go about practices that may create conflict.

They also work with local council leadership to solve domestic conflict amicably.

“We work with all men regardless of their history and bringing them on board on issues of Gender based Violence has been one of the best approaches,” says Oyat.

The initiative has redefined masculinity by making men partners, working together with their wives to change the community and men as agents of change as well as clients after suffering the problem of Gender Based Violence.

Olum was enrolled in 2021, and he realized that his old ways were in futility. He feels free to discuss plans for his family and jointly decide with his wife on how best to plan for their income.

For his wife, the move has “changed the trajectory of their marriage from worse to better”.

According to Koro Sub County LC II chairperson Rose Lamwono, the model has created very strong pillars of harmony and productivity in homes.

“We have worked with the role model men to bring harmony and peace in the homes. Before, in a week we would get 5- 10 cases or even more which is no longer the case,” said Lamwono.

On reproductive health, Lamwano notes that men have been principal in ensuring that their women attend antenatal services during pregnancy which has helped reduce mortality.

Aswa regional police spokesperson applauded the idea as key in building relationships at home. However, the police says they are learning from this approach to create a community-based conflict resolution model that helps families to sit through differences amicably to defuse conflict.

This model is also progressively enforcing women land rights in different communities, according to Oyat.

“Clan leaders who we have enrolled in the model can now see that women are very important drivers of development in the community. They have started to consider their opinion while distributing land among the family,” Oyat says.

Olum and Angeyo have jointly invested in farming business, made sales and profits that have enabled them to sustain their family and educate their children.

“We can now read from the same page. We have managed to work together, and take our children to school. The same income that he would waste in drinking joints,” Angeyo says.

The initiative which was enrolled in 2013 has supported over 10,000 households in Acholi subregion.

Despite this progress, domestic violence reigns high here by police crime statistics and it's based on other existing cultural norms among the people of Acholi..

“What we need to note is that the increase in reported cases of GBV means that society is more conscious now than before,” Oyat explains.

Through knowledge sharing which has increased awareness in communities on issues of gender-based prevention and response, such biases are being eliminated and men have become ambassadors in the fight against gender-based violence, according to Olum.