Counterpart’s USAID-funded Jagoranci project collaborated with Save the Children’s Kulawa project and the Regional Directorate for the Promotion of Women of Tillabéri to promote women’s rights and gender equality through digital inclusion.
The celebration, which occurred on March 8 for International Women’s Day, was held under the theme, “For an inclusive digital world: innovation and technology for equality among the sexes.” The event focused on strengthening the capacity of women and girls in the Kollo region by encouraging the use of interactive voice response platforms as tools to advance their rights, reduce gender inequalities, increase their participation at all levels of decision-making, and increase their access to health information and services.
The mayor of Kollo speaking at the event.
Interactive voice response is an automated telephone system that includes pre-recorded prompts and messages to engage callers to provide or receive information.
This activity brought 300 people together, including the administrative and customary authorities, mayors from all 11 communes in the department of Kollo, the regional directorate and department-level representatives for women’s promotion, members of citizen monitoring committees (Comité de Veilles Citoyennes) and members from women’s groups, and young people from the region.
Administrative authorities emphasized the need to support women’s rights. The ceremony included songs and sketches with expressive content to denounce the digital divide between women and men, in terms of access to digital tools, and to raise awareness on the importance of using digital technologies for women’s empowerment and improving women’s access to basic social services.
Viamo International, a partner to both the Jagoranci and Kulawa projects, presented digital products related to health and governance. Viamo encouraged participants to call the free 3-2-1 interactive voice response number, providing them with information and building their capacity on governance, and increasing their access to health information and services.
The women and girl ambassadors of the digital platforms receive an orientation.
Twenty women and youth ambassadors received orientation on how to use Jagoranci and Kulawa’s digital platforms to partake in digital campaigns and how to become ambassadors in promoting these tools and showing their networks how to use them actively.
To continue these efforts, the ambassadors developed an action plan on the use of digital platforms and increasing the leadership of women and girls in the Kollo commune to actively contribute to improving citizens’ access to basic social services and their peers’ priorities.
To learn more about our Jagoranci project, read this story about a peer-to-peer learning event that brought together Nigerien communes to address community challenges.
