Adolescents and youth in Burundi have co-created “Twigishanye” to brigde the digital divide and build knowledge at the community level
Jean Gabriel Uwamahoro
Using the Human Centered Design approach, adolescent’ informal advisory group of UNICEF adapted this initiative to the Burundian context to enable adolescents and youth getting the information they need to improve the quality of their lives. Following a series of meetings of the advisory group, a name, slogan, and logo for the platform, as well as some ideas for content to be conveyed on the site, were proposed for the Burundian community. The new name given is “Twigishanye” which means “Let’s learn together” and the slogan is “Ubumenyi bwacu, kazoza keza” which means “Our knowledge, Our future”. The logo is a map of Burundi with the name and the slogan of the platform.
What is Twigishanye?
It is a website hosting digital content, accessible even on low-end devices, designed to provide free information to save lives and improve quality of life. ‘’Twigishanye’’ helps communities access educational knowledge that is vital to their daily lives.
Plenty topics and issues can be discussed on ‘’Twigishanye’’ namely maternal health, hygiene, emergency information on diseases such as yellow fever, polio and cholera, HIV and sexual health tips for teens, internet safety, positive parenting techniques, etc.
Featuring multimedia and two-way communication functions, the IoGT platform can also be used to gather feedback and local best practices from communities through polling and survey features. The current content on the site was developed by UNICEF’s global expert teams and was revised by UNICEF technicians in Burundi for contextualization and adaptation prior submitting for translation.
Future content will be the life skills module as well as other content proposed by UNICEF sections and partners to achieve the goal of the IoGT site which is to provide young people and adolescents with training material within the framework of the “learn-to-earn” initiative.
By connecting to ‘’Twigishanye’’, children, teens, mothers, fathers, all family members, health educators, caregivers and community members can access quality, up-to-date content in the local language right on their cell phones, anytime, for free.
With ‘’Twigishanye’’, students can learn skills useful for their future careers, mothers can learn skills on how to protect children, adolescents can learn their rights, citizens and communities have the tools to report problems and demand change.
Source: UN Children’s Fund