In light of increasing demand for more accurate, reliable and comparable violence against women (VAW) prevalence data, the kNOwVAWdata initiative launched in 2016.

kNOwVAWdata builds on a long history of support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to countries conducting VAW prevalence studies throughout Asia and the Pacific. These efforts combined to form the kNOwVAWdata initiative, which provides technical support and capacity building, enabling countries to undertake VAW prevalence studies in an ethical and scientifically robust way.

A hallmark of the kNOwVAWdata initiative is the partnership between the UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office (APRO), the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the University of Melbourne, and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). Under this partnership, UNFPA APRO and the University of Melbourne have collaboratively developed and piloted a standard 4-week curriculum for capacity building to measure the prevalence of VAW and improve data literacy. This curriculum is the foundation of the kNOwVAWdata Course on the Measurement of Violence against Women.

The kNOwVAWdata course team will make available to interested parties the Course Curriculum and Facilitator Guidebook along with accompanying materials, developed for use in Asia and the Pacific. Doing so enables expansion of the global skillset for safe and ethical measurement of VAW. See kNOwVAWdata.com/register for more information.

The kNOwVAWdata Course Curriculum and accompanying Facilitator Guidebook were developed as opensource materials for use by other facilitators and trainers. This document provides helpful guidance on using the materials, making adaptations for local contexts and acknowledging the course developers when using the kNOwVAWdata materials.

The kNOwVAWdata team and its partners request that those utilising the materials abide by the guidance provided in this document.