UNICEF Swaziland is partnering with SWAGAA in the fight to end violence against children (VAC) in Eswatini.
In a bid towards having all SWAGAA staff equipped and ready to swiftly respond to cases child violence, UNICEF Swaziland’s Child Protection Specialist, Ms. Phumzile Dlamini, trained SWAGAA’s staff on the U-Report social monitoring tool this July.
Using the RapidPro platform, U-Report is an innovative way to engage young people on issues they care about. Open-source and free to use, U-Report relies on volunteers to provide information through SMS messages on urgent issues in their communities. The data collected from these confidential messages is used to improve programs and services provided to people through governments, NGOs and international institutions, like UNICEF.
For Eswatini, this form of reporting and intervention seeks to strengthen the national response mechanisms on violence against children so that more cases of VAC will be heard and responded to.
SWAGAA’s Care & Support department will be spearheading this project with the aim of decreasing the level of VAC in Eswatini by 2022.
