Giving Compass' Take:

• Global Citizen profiles a grassroots organization in Uganda that aims to help victims of sexual violence, providing medical care and law enforcement advocacy.

• What are we doing to protect women and girls around the world from this vicious cycle? One way to start is to change perceptions and empower those who are brave enough to come forward with their stories.

• Here's an argument for reframing sexual violence as a systemic problem.

When Tabitha Mpamira-Kaguri began teaching elementary school students in rural Uganda, she learned that an 11-year-old student of hers had been raped by a 35-year old man.

She then learned that a 5-year-old girl in the nearby village had been raped and infected with HIV by her grandfather. Then a girl in a neighboring village came forward to reveal that she had been raped repeatedly by her father since she was 4 years old.

The stories kept coming — and none of the survivors had received any form of justice.

The scale of sexual violence seemed overwhelming and it was made even worse by the fact that local law enforcement was doing little to stop it.

“I learned that a victim in Uganda has to pay for the police to make an arrest and for medical as well as counseling services,” Mpamira-Kaguri recently told Global Citizen. “Being a survivor myself and having two girls of my own, I couldn’t let this cycle of sexual trauma continue.”

So she started the EDJA Foundation — named for her mother Edith and mother-in-law Janey, both survivors of domestic violence — to fight sexual violence, provide health care and counseling for victims, and reform the systems that foster cultures of impunity and sexism throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Read the full article about ending sexual violence in sub-Saharan Africa by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.