Tigo changing lives of 400,000 children annually
Millicom, the leading telecommunications and media company in Africa and Latin America, has released research that shows the company has made a major impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of African children through its community projects.
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The data revealed that in 2014, more than 400,000 children in Africa were positively impacted by education, development, health, social inclusion and child protection initiatives that were selected and supported through Tigo Digital Changemakers, one of the beneficiaries of Millicom’s donations to community projects in Africa.
Among the children who benefited were more than 10,000 students who accessed quality educational resources in Tanzania, 1,600 children who were tested for life-threatening bilharzia in Chad, and 1,100 children who were engaged through human trafficking rescue and prevention work in Ghana.
Tigo Digital Changemakers is now in its fourth year and receives an annual grant of more than $1 million from Millicom.
Improving lives of children
The programme, launched in partnership with Millicom’s Tigo brand and the non-profit organisation Reach for Change, was set up in 2012 to improve the lives of children in areas such as health, education, digital literacy and access to ICT and economic participation using digital technology.
The programme launches annual competitions in Ghana, Chad, Rwanda, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania to find and support the top local social entrepreneurs with innovations that transform children’s lives.
According to Millicom Africa’s CEO, Cynthia Gordon, the Tigo Digital Changemakers programme exemplified Millicom’s strategy and commitment to give back to the communities in each of its six markets in Africa.
“Tigo is championing the Internet and the powerful role of digital technology to advance people’s lives both financially and socially,” she said.
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“Tigo Digital Changemakers is a wonderfully powerful story enabling us to not only help entrepreneurs to make their dreams a reality, but to also help people bring about positive and sustainable differences to the lives of hundreds of thousands of children,” she added.
The Reach for Change Africa Regional Director, Amma Sefa-Dedeh Lartey, emphasised the commitment to measure the impact of the support the Tigo Digital Changemakers programme provided.
“We closely monitor our Digital Changemakers, in terms of their impact on the children and the communities that they support so we can see how well these entrepreneurial projects grow and develop to help even more people,” she said.
Winners of the competition must demonstrate how they positively impact the lives of children and youth under 18 years. They must also show that they have the potential to grow their ventures through a sustainable business model and be focused on creating long-lasting change.
In return, they receive one year’s funding of $20,000 along with access to a world-class incubator where they receive coaching from experts, as well as individualised digital technology and business mentoring provided by Reach for Change, Millicom and its Tigo brand.
Tigo staff members get involved in the selection process and in supporting the winners with their expertise across various fields.
“Since 2012, more than a thousand members of staff have volunteered in the Tigo Digital Changemaker programmes,” Gordon said.
In 2014, Millicom donated $7.6 million to community projects in the countries where it operates.
Millicom’s overall corporate citizenship contributions, which include direct social investment, volunteering, giving in kind (at cost) and other related overheads, was worth almost $30 million in 2014.
Health support in Chad
Bilharzia is a disease that affects almost 210 million people worldwide and an estimated 100,000 people die from it every year. In villages far from healthcare facilities, the disease is often detected late, which risks hindering children’s brain development.
Living in Chad, where a large proportion of the population live in remote areas, Didier, Association Tchad Plus, knew he needed to step up to address this challenge to children’s health. He developed a mobile device to bring affordable and convenient testing and treatment of children infected with bilharzia. The device radically improves the possibilities to detect the disease early, even in remote areas in Chad.
Since being selected as a Tigo Digital Changemaker in 2014, Didier has partnered Tigo to provide three toll-free hotlines that the public can use to access information about bilharzia and request for urine collection at home.
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He has scaled from one to three mobile labs and increased his support from N'djamena to Mayo Kebi District and has ran two campaigns in villages to spread awareness of the disease.
In 2015, more than 1,600 children have been tested for bilharzia and more than 300 cases were treated. Through the awareness campaign more than 60,000 Chadians have been reached.
Education in Tanzania
In Tanzania, where 67 per cent assigned teachers are missing in public schools, Faraja Nyalandu of Shule Direct works to address the problem of access to quality educational resources among students. There is a current annual demand of more than 20,000 Science and Mathematics teachers in Tanzania.
Faraja’s business, Shule Direct, is an online platform that provides educational learning content for students and teachers in secondary schools. It enables students to learn independently and provides teachers with qualified teaching resources. Shule Direct offers local digital accessible educational content on the web and mobile devices.
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The content is available online on an Open Educational Resource (OER) and can also be directly installed in schools in an offline Learning Management System (LMS). Instead of an app, Faraja targeted the masses by using an SMS platform that provides learning and revision quizzes for on-the-go learning on any basic mobile phone.
Faraja has already digitised courses in nine subject areas of the national curriculum for secondary schools in Tanzania.
In 2014, more than 7,300 children participated in in-school programmes, 4,813 children accessed Shule Direct’s offline digital educational content, 3,800 students subscribed to Shule Direct’s online portal and 25,000 users had visited the website where 42.7 per cent of whom were return visitors.
As of September this year, Shule Direct had over 10,200 subscribers and over 115,000 visitors with the returning visitor rate at 50 per cent. Shule Direct plans to launch more products and features to its existing offering in efforts to develop interactive learning modules using technology.
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Child protection in Ghana
At just six years old, James Kofi Annan of Challenging Heights was trafficked into fishing labour where he worked for seven years under terrible conditions and abuse. James Kofi Annan, finally managed to escape at the age of 13 and against all odds, made a career as bank manager at Barclays. Today he is working to prevent other children from the forced labour he experienced.
Through education, economic empowerment and community mobilisation, Challenging Heights targets at-risk, poor families to explain the dangers of child trafficking, and to address its root causes.
Challenging Heights’ initiatives have taught public transport drivers how to watch out for child trafficking and what to do if they suspect it. Rescue missions set out to find young children who have been trafficked, and return them both to their families through rehabilitation and reintegration, and schooling.
Challenging Heights runs a specialist rehabilitation shelter called Hovde House, a school for more than 700 children. It also provides an IT centre for students as well as a community library.
In 2014, more than 1100 children were supported and more than 900 were supported to go to school. In addition, 100 children were supported in sports and recreation programme and more than 50 children were supported in the remedial programme (leadership, ICT and entrepreneurship).
From January to September 2015, Challenging Heights rehabilitated 323 children at Hovde House. Challenging heights has also built its own national headquarters with conference and meeting facilities and has built a 50-seater capacity children’s library. Challenging heights is a well-recognised global leader in the fight against child trafficking.