The movement to prevent violence against children in and through schools has gained significant momentum. Schools provide a structured and accountable environment with established and financed infrastructure, making them ideal platforms for advancing discussions on violence prevention and engaging the wider community, including parents. However, this progress faces threats not only from global backsliding and backlash, but also from increasing fragmentation, which could undermine the significant achievements made in transforming education systems - and schools in particular - into spaces that foster safety, justice, and inclusion.

The Coalition for Good Schools will host a participant driven event aimed at showcasing the latest evidence on what works to prevent violence against children in and through schools, highlighting the innovation and learning of civil society practitioners and researchers focused on systemic solutions. The event will spotlight learnings from collaboration with governments across the Global South, and stress the crucial role that both civil society and governments must play in leading the transformation of education systems to effectively prevent violence.

This participant driven event will unpack what is needed to further solidify our understanding of what works at scale, to strengthen resilience and capabilities of the next generation of activists, practitioners and researchers, and explore how we are building this next pipeline of leadership. Together we will foster connections across sub-sectors by explicitly examining intersections between initiatives, encouraging reflection on commonalities and differences, celebrating civil society leadership, and facilitating open discussions about shared strengths and challenges - be it in terms of resources or capacities - in the current evolving context. The event will demonstrate field-building around violence prevention in schools to date while emphasizing need – and highlighting urgent opportunities – for civil society co-leadership in direct partnership with governments and larger global systems. This will include sharing from:

1. The Coalition for Good Schools (Global Hub) will share from recent school- and civil society-consultations and practice-based learning to inform the development of a foundational intervention, as well as progress on a Young Leaders Fellowship to build a pipeline of leadership for violence prevention in and through schools in the Global South.

2. P.E.A.C.E. (Partnership to End Abuse through Contexts of Education) on the evidence we have (and what we should be doing with it now), the evidence we need, and what other learning we should be paying attention to on school-based prevention at scale.

3. Coalition Regional Hub leaders and members on field-building in collaboration with other prevention movements, sharing on scaling interventions, and recently collated priorities from regional consultations and field mappings.

4. Civil society partners (Coalition & What Works II members) on good practices on integrating VAC and GBV prevention into national education systems, with guided discussion on effective civil society partnerships with governments.