A/HRC/23/17 E/CN.6/2013/8 9. The accomplishments of the Trust Fund grantees in 2012 make a compelling case for how much can be achieved by providing strategic and direct grants to programmes of high quality led by effective institutions. Through the programmes supported by the Trust Fund, grantees are building the foundation for an evidencebased, comprehensive model to prevent violence against women that can be scaled-up and replicated regionally, nationally and globally. The Trust Fund helps fill a critical gap in resources and increases the number of successful initiatives that have proven to be a factor in the reduction of violence against women and girls. Preventing violence 10. Investing in primary prevention efforts at the individual, community, and societal levels to stop violence before it occurs remains a priority for the Trust Fund. This requires the identification of, and response to, the underlying causes of the problem, rather than focusing only on the consequences of violence. In addition, preventing violence entails interventions aimed at transforming unequal power relations based on gender, eliminating discriminatory social norms and confronting attitudes and behaviours that condone and normalize violence against women and girls, both in public and in private. To break the cycle of inequality, exclusion and marginalization that fuels violence, primary prevention focuses on changing the mind-sets and stereotypes that are at their roots. Primary prevention is a fundamental part of any long-term strategy that aims to eliminate violence against women and girls. 11. The Trust Fund has invested approximately $16 million of its active portfolio in community mobilization initiatives with the goal of bringing violence prevention efforts within reach of women and girls. By creating community support and zero tolerance for gender-based violence, these ongoing programmes are promoting changes at the individual level while increasing the protection of women at the community level. 12. The Trust Fund has also invested approximately $6 million on school-based prevention programmes that aim to create safe spaces for girls to continue their education. Engaging school administrators, girls, boys, parents and their communities, these interventions are recognized as an important component of any comprehensive strategy that will bring the intergenerational transmission of violence to a halt by tackling the norms that legitimize violence in society and the family. 13. The school-based prevention programmes supported by the Trust Fund provide girls and their support networks with the tools to realize their human rights and avoid potentially abusive situations. By engaging girls and boys, parents, school administrations and communities, the programmes directly target systematic gender discrimination and social norms that devalue girls, with the aim of changing personal behaviours and institutional and community rules that condone violence. In doing so, Trust Fund grantees are strengthening the role of girls and boys as agents and subjects of change in the achievement of gender equality and the elimination of violence against women and girls. 14. Responding to high levels of rural migration, the Beijing Cultural Development Centre for Rural Women is implementing a programme aimed at preventing violence against young girls left behind by their parents who have migrated to cities for work (girls being raised by relatives in their parents’ absence), who are particularly 4 12-64357