In February I was in Benin to support staff to pilot the idea of using SMS reporting (FrontlineSMS) and digital mapping (Ushahidi) to strengthen local and national systems for reporting, tracking and responding to violence against children. We conducted 2 workshops in mid-February with youth leaders, frontline staff, community members, local authorities from the Center for Social Protection (CPS) and representatives from the Ministry of the Family to get things started.
For some more background, check out my previous posts on the Violence against Children (VAC) project, the questions we asked ourselves before getting started on the SMS and mapping initiative, and the February workshops in Benin and what we learned there.
Since February, staff in Benin have been following up with workshop participants and with local authorities and institutions, including: the Prefect, the Mayors, community supervisors, animators of the children’s/youth media clubs, headmasters and other school authorities and the CPS. The youth in one community did a radio program about violence against children and talked about SMS reporting. They also designed an information sheet that’s been hung up all over the town to encourage the population to report cases of violence.
Henri, Plan Benin’s ICT Director who facilitated at the Benin workshops, went to Togo to replicate the training with staff and youth there. He and Carmen, who manages the overall VAC project in Benin, have also been observing and collecting feedback on the system to see where it needs tweaking. They have put a project plan together for the next 6 months or so.
Observations that Henri and Carmen shared and some thoughts we have about resolving them:
Issue:
- Most people call instead of sending SMS
Hmmm….
- Why? Habit? Literacy? Unclear indications of what to do or unclear expectations of what the system is for? We need to find out more about this. It would be good to know exactly what kind of volume we are talking about total in terms of SMS vs calls. (I will update this post when I find out.)
- Should we start taking calls too then? And are there resources and capacity to manage calls in addition to FrontlineSMS (which is automated)? How are we linking with the Child Help Line in Benin?
- Could both calls and SMS be administered in the Ushahidi system? Eg., Just as an administrator needs to review any SMS’s that come into Ushahidi before approving them, someone could be tasked with inputting information from a phone call into the Ushahidi back end to then trigger the rest of the process (verification, response, etc). And how would that impact on pulling data out of the system for decision making? (See this post for more information on how the system is currently conceived)
Issue:
- Some people are sending a re-call SMS (asking us to return the call)
Hmmm….
- We need to find out why people are sending re-call messages instead of SMS’s. Because in the current set-up, text messages are not free? Literacy issues? Because our system looks like something else they’ve done where re-call was the norm? Something else?
- If it’s due to low literacy or language issues, how can we open the system to those who cannot read/write or who do not use French?
- Plan Benin is discussing with the GSM provider to find a way to send back an automatic reply SMS informing people not to call but to send a message, and to take this opportunity to indicate in the message what is expected as information. But if literacy/language is the issue, we will not have solved anything by doing this…. Sounds like we really need to make sure calling is an option, and that good integration with the national Child Help Line is a real priority.
- Plan Benin is also negotiating getting a “green line” or free short code, so that might resolve part of this.
Issue:
- Many people are not using the key word ‘HALTE’ (stop) at the beginning of the message, meaning that the commands don’t trigger the messages to automatically send the information to Ushahidi. (In the current system, each SMS should include the key word ‘HALTE’. This key word triggers a “thanks for your message” automatic response from FrontlineSMS, and the forwarding of the message to the Ushahidi back end for subsequent management and follow up by local authorities.)
Hmmm….
- Staff noticed that most (but not all) of the messages without the key word ‘’HALTE’’ contained the word ‘enfant’ (child). Henri has added ‘enfant’ as a key word in addition to ‘HALTE’ — and says it is working fine. So we will assess if this helps.
- Another alternative would be to not use any keywords – we will need to look into whether we can set FrontlineSMS up so that any SMS that goes to that number gets auto forwarded to Ushahidi.
Issue:
- Most of the messages are too vague to find the place and the victim for responding (and people do not have GPS enabled phones). We have suggested that an SMS report should contain certain information [HALTE+type of violence+where it’s happening (eg., school, home, etc)+village name+district+age+sex+name of child if known], but people don’t follow the suggested format.
Hmmm….
- How can we simplify it or better explain the type of information that’s needed? Something we need to dig deeper into and consult with users to figure out. Carmen’s take is that we are at the beginning of the process and we need to be patient and sensitize a lot so that people get used to the idea and understand how things work.
Issue:
- Compatible FLSMS phones and modems are very difficult to find. We were only able to find one phone that was compatible in Benin (a used one) because newer phone models are not compatible and the modems we found refused to connect.
Hmmm….
- We really need to get this resolved since the entire system in Benin rests on one phone. What if it stops working? It’s really difficult to expand the project without a larger set of phone/modem options. We’ll work with the FrontlineSMS forum or staff (both are always super helpful on this kind of thing) in the next couple weeks to figure out how to resolve the compatibility issues, because there are modems available in West Africa that should be compatible, but that we couldn’t get to function.
Issue:
- We planned for community response teams to be able to subscribe to alerts on Ushahidi, so that when there is an incident reported in the zone where they work, they would be alerted by SMS and could set the follow up process in motion. But we haven’t been able to get the alerts working on Ushahidi or set up email reporting there.
Hmmm….
- We discussed with the Ushahidi team and the problem was that not all the strings of code in Ushahidi had been translated into French yet. Thanks to @theresac and @penelopeinparis, who volunteered to translate a load of strings, we are getting everything into French, and Henry at Ushahidi is helping get alerts working. We still need to finalize all the elements on our Ushahidi page however and get everything working. We’d also like to customize our Ushahidi page to make it our own, similar to the customizing that Voices of Kibera has done with their Ushahidi instance.
Any additional thoughts or help on the above issues are most welcome!
As for next steps, Henri and Carmen shared their plans:
- Present the system to political and administrative authorities, including: head of the Brigade for the Protection of Minors, juvenile judges, Ministry of the Family’s Director for Children and Adolescents, Director of Family Programs, Minister of ICTs, cabinet and authorities who regulate telecommunications, Ministry of the Interior and Public Security, National Assembly, mayors and prefects, schools and teacher-parent committees, community authorities, media
- Train staff, government partners, school and parent committees, and local NGOs on the reporting system, including a 1-day workshop with all Plan staff and a 1 day workshop with local NGO partners, schools and government staff
- Accompany child protection committees and organized youth groups to use the system. This will be done by holding sessions with organized children and youth groups at village level to reinforce and raise awareness on the reporting system; training child protection committees to use the new reporting system; holding one day sessions each month with the village level child protection system staff to discuss follow up on reports that have come in, and installing FrontlineSMS in each local site and adding local focal points as Ushahidi administrators
- Strengthen awareness in the public and with leaders to support violence reporting by developing a communications plan to generate awareness on the issue of violence, the importance of reporting, and the mechanisms to report via SMS; supporting youth to use arts and theater to raise awareness on the issue of violence against children; talking with religious leaders and village chiefs; creating television, radio, newspaper and web advertisements to reach the general public and decision makers
- Secure a free short code (target: by May)
- Conduct a national level evaluation workshop with involved local and national actors (in 6 months)
As we move forward, more questions will surely come up and we’ll need to continually tweak things. But I feel that we’re off to a good start. The fact that people are calling in and SMS’ing in is a good sign already that the program has some potential, and that people are willing to report violence against children.
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Related posts on Wait… What?
Breaking it down: violence against children
Fostering a new political consciousness on violence against children
Seven (or more) questions to ask before adding ICTs
Hi Linda – interesting analysis of the challenges that this Frontline SMS/Ushahidi project is facing in Benin!
In response to your first issue that you list – on the SMS vs. actual phone calls – perhaps you could look into using Freedom Fone – http://www.freedomfone.org/
“Does your community need access to information but has limited or no access to the internet or email? Do you want to be able to share more information than 160 characters allows? Freedom Fone offers the possibility to extend the reach of information to citizens and groups presently excluded from the information loop because of lack of access to resources such as computers and the internet.”
Best of luck,
Kristin Antin – New Tactics Online Community Builder
Kristin, thanks for that idea – I was also thinking something like FreedomFone might be useful, or better linking with the Child Help Line/real live help line operators.
Cheers and thanks for reading!
Linda
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