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U-Reporters discussing one of the questions they received on the U-Partners’ dashboard.
September 2022
Walking into the meeting room filled with three young girls and boys, you could feel the energy, sense the excitement, and hear the buzz of conversation. Sana, one of the female U-Reporters from Nangarhar province, beamed telling us how eager she was to be part of such an innovative initiative.
Mirwais, one of the U-Reporters, is spurred to be a key player in this year’s nationwide polio campaign.
“I feel empowered to play my part in eradicating polio from Afghanistan knowing that I can reach my peers with life-saving information at zero cost using the U-Report SMS and smartphone-supported tool.”
The driving force for this year's Polio campaign, targeting 9.9 million children under five, is maintaining commitment among all partners and parents to eradicate Polio.
Primarily affecting children under the age of five, the Polio virus attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis or even death.
It is estimated that up to 40% of children in Afghanistan are unvaccinated. This leaves the door open for Polio to spread. Most children in Afghanistan have not been accessible because of barriers such as insecurity, strained healthcare services, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
In light of these challenges, what role can young people play to eradicate Polio from Afghanistan?
UNICEF’s U-Report, a global messaging tool created to engage young people on issues that matter most to them, has been instrumental in creating awareness on social issues such as this. The Polio programme team launched a U-Report poll on 12 September to measure the impact of social mobilization ahead of the recently launched nationwide Polio campaign during the week of 19 – 22 September 2022.
https://afghanistan.ureport.in/opinion/5985/
Out of the 25,000 U-Reporters who took part in this pre-campaign survey, only 42% were aware of an upcoming exercise to vaccinate children under five in their community. The poll also revealed that 43% of those aware of the campaign heard about it from social media, 16% reported word of mouth, and 15% heard about it from U-Report sensitization messages they had earlier received from the 7575 shortcode.
For several years, the polio disease spread rapidly throughout the country, paralyzing thousands of children. In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was created to stop the spread of Polio in Afghanistan. Although recent annual cases have dramatically decreased, Afghanistan remains one of the two countries where Polio is still endemic.
Recently, the U-Report platform reached an incredible milestone: 25 million young people using the platform. From Afghanistan to Angola, and from Jordan to Jamaica, young people everywhere want a say in their futures – and they are playing a vital role in community advocacy. Teaming up with UNICEF Afghanistan colleagues from Polio and Social Behavioral Change, for the first time on U-Report Afghanistan, U-Reporters were invited to be a part of the second live chat that allows community users with simple feature phones and smartphones to participate in this pre-campaign conversation to raise awareness of the importance of vaccinating every child.
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L-R Mirwais, Omar, and Sanaullah sharing the U-Report Polio chatbot with their peers on social media.
“Realizing I can be anywhere in the world and share such an important message with thousands of people within minutes is really exciting,” says Omar, a U-Reporter.
Within two hours of starting the live chat, the U-Report platform had received over 5,000 Polio and Polio-vaccine related questions which were answered through the U-Partners’ platform, a U-Report dashboard that enables the UNICEF team and partners to respond to queries from U-Reporters. By the end of the day, the team had interacted and raised awareness with over 8,000 community members across the country.
“This was an interesting live chat for me. We learned a lot about Polio & shared it with other U-Reporters. More people need to know what Polio is and why they have to vaccinate their children,” says Hotak, a 20-year-old U-Reporter from Nangarhar province.
For the first time, the country is remarkably close to achieving zero cases. With enthusiastic young people like Sana, Mirwais, Omar, Sanaullah, Zulhaija and Shawkat who are already reaching thousands of households and communities using U-Report’s innovative SMS chatbot tool in sensitizing and raising awareness, I hope we will.
You too, can join the train of change makers to make history in Afghanistan by enrolling in the movement today.
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Sana, one of the female U-Reporters responding to Polio questions from other U-Reporters during the live chat session.
Here is how you can be a part of the movement from your mobile phone:
1: Join the U-Report community today and share the Polio chatbot when you click this link.
2: Bring your community onboard by resharing this article on your social media platforms by clicking on any of the reshare buttons on the top left corner of this page.
3: Do you have better ideas? Fantastic! We want to hear from you. Send us an email with your thoughts and ideas on how we can rid Afghanistan of the deadly Polio virus once and for all.
Written by: Salamatu Muhammed, U-Report Afghanistan Programme Officer.
