Awareness and prevention play a crucial role in attempts to eliminate and remove the root causes of gender based violence.

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Certain actions to make an important contribution to such preventative work are the following:

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• Organise campaigns, training, peer-to-peer education to change attitudes, or questioning gender roles and stereotypes in society;

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• Include a gender equality dimension in all aspects of education policies;

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• Produce leaflets or develop to make information available to the public regarding gender based violence;

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• Offer training for academics, students, trainers, the police, the justice system, health care providers and other stakeholders to be able to identify, address and respond to gender based violence;

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• Support the self-esteem and autonomy of groups are more likely to be at risk of violence through empowerment programmes;

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• Empower women and promote community dialogue on gender equality, for example, through: public meetings, presentations, workshops, informal social events using interpersonal and participatory approaches;

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• Promote gender-fair and inclusive language to improve equality between women and men and avoid the reproduction of sexist and biased thoughts, attitudes and behaviours;

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• Develop tools to ensure gender equality by reviewing education policies, legislation, curricula and textbooks and share the outcomes with the relevant stakeholders (CoE, n.d.);

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• Public outcry often pressures Universities to act in a swift and meaningful way. However, the public is often unaware of the kind of issues which women face both in society in a general sense and in Universities more specifically. Several campaigns and reformations to education are required to better teach future generations about gender, equality, and diversity;

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• In parallel, it is urgent that higher education institutions promote, at different levels, ways to involve students, teachers and non-teaching staff in seminars, workshops, and training on this issue, clarifying the legal and social dimensions of the problem;

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• The use of web pages and also of dissemination channels such as newspapers and radio stations are also two actions of interest that allow raising awareness and bringing the various problems into the debate;

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• Also, knowing to recognize the violation is only the first step in dealing with it, so further empowering programs to the most vulnerable society members should be designed and accessible to different groups ensuring that they would contribute to increased filling of complaints to the responsible institution/s;

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• In this sense, the possibility for gender equality commissions, student ombudsmen, or gender equality offices to create and run discussion forums is also very significant and important, attracting students of various genders and also nationalities;

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• The improvement of the study of these issues in the universities themselves, with the attribution of awards and specific funding lines are also actions that contribute to generate social awareness on the phenomenon;