The Conn@ct.Now programme enables children and young people in war zones to use IT and media to improve their lives.
The programme will run in four countries: Burundi, Colombia, Sudan and Uganda.
New challenges in (post-) conflict areas require new initiatives by new actors: to increase outreach to former unreached, to hear the former unheard, and to optimise existing efforts to support children and young people affected by conflict. War Child, Child Helpline International, RNTC, TNO and T-Mobile, with their local partner organisations, have taken on this challenge and have joined forces and have build up a unique initiative.
These parties have rallied around the overall program goal to reach, support and activate children and young people to exercise their rights.
ICT and Media have already proven to impact on children and young people around the world. ICT tools will help increase the number of beneficiaries that can be reached. In addition they will help to improve accessibility and overall quality of our humanitarian services, increase replication and scalability of current (direct and indirect) interventions and therefore, make our work more cost-efficient.
Conn@ct Now will build on existing work of WCH, CHI and RNTC and will seek opportunities to link in and coordinate in program development and implementation where possible. Moreover, together with TNO and T-Mobile, the alliance will connect with new and existing initiatives in ICTs and Media, thereby providing ‘a boost’ to what’s already being done in four key thematic areas of Child Protection, Psychosocial support, Education and Participation. In this way, it will, leverage overall resources and thus making ‘the whole more than the sum of its parts’.
