SERATA promotes equal parenting, by shifting the focus of parenting to fatherhood and celebrating it the way we traditionally celebrate motherhood through the “Celebrating Fatherhood” campaign.

Ideally, any intervention to accomplish gender equality should begin at family level. A more hands-on father enables the redistribution of family responsibilities by being equally capable of caring for their children, allowing the mother to make choices for her own career and personal development.

Celebrating fatherhood aims to promote equal parenting, by acknowledging the importance of engaging fathers in raising children through highlighting stories from fathers who have been actively involved in parenting.

SERATA prioritizes prevention measures to achieve gender equality end gender-based violence. We believe that the best way to end violence against women and girls is to prevent it from happening in the first place by addressing its root and structural causes.

Therefore, SERATA focuses on educating and working with young boys in promoting respectful relationships and gender equality through a US-based curriculum LIVERESPECT™, an initiative by A Call To Men (http://www.liverespect.org/)

The curriculum

• promotes healthy, respectful manhood
• decreases language and actions that degrade women, girls and other marginalized groups
• challenges harmful cultural and social norms
• decreases instances of bullying and homophobia

To aid better communication and bonding between parents and their children, SERATA ran a 6-session Positive Parenting support group through a programme called Semarak Kasih – an initiative by UNICEF Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), The National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) and Maestral.

Each week, parents met up for 2-3 hours to share their challenges in parenting and together found solutions or actionable steps to work on.

SERATA looks forward to implementing more of these programs in the future, especially targeting fathers to get them engaged with caring for their children from the first 1000 days of a child’s life. Through this, we hope that it will help fathers create a strong bond with their children together with their life partners or co-parents.

Although SERATA is primarily an organization that promotes gender equality, we also work on other issues that are caused by inequalities. Corruption is a symptom of inequality and is often perpetrated by men.

The three-day workshop dubbed “East Malaysians Against Corruption”, was held in December 2019 in Gaya Centre Hotel, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. The workshop was supported by the Malaysia Reform Initiative (MARI), US Embassy Kuala Lumpur and USAID. The 20 participants were made up of junior to mid-level, as well as senior activists from a wide array of organizations from all around Sabah and Sarawak.

The three-day workshop was aimed at improving the capabilities of Sabahan and Sarawakian activists to effectively engage in ending corruption using strategies which are communications to the public and government, policy and law-making under Malaysia Baharu, and engaging policy makers and the public on corruption-based issues.