Case Study: Plan International Zambia Taking Action to Ending Child Marriage

Case Study: Plan International Zambia
Taking Action to Ending Child Marriage

Plan International Zambia has been using our Smart Solar Media (SSM) system since early 2021 as part of their on-going projects and awareness campaigns. One of the key campaigns that Plan Zambia has been involved on, focuses on creating further awareness towards taking action to ending child marriage. Tespack’s SSM system has been used as part of this campaign in order to reach the most remote areas in Zambia, in disseminating information about the harmful practices of child marriage and the impact it has on the overall development of girls who have gone this through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGk35u9JyJE&t=2s

Taking Action to Ending the Child Marriage – “Seeing is Believing”

Zambia has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world with 31% of women aged 20-24 married by the age of 18. In Malawi, 1 in 2 girls are married by the age of 18 as found by the UN Women Africa research. Plan International has been working on their campaign “Seeing is Believing”, in taking action and creating awareness to ending child marriage while providing further access to opportunities for local girls and women of Zambia.

“By ending child marriage we want to create equality between the sexes. A woman should take a leading role in society,” says Charity, a 24 year old youth activist who has been campaigning for an end to child marriage in Malawi.

As large part of the population of Zambia lives in rural regions, with close to 70% of the country not having access to electricity, as found by Sustainable Energy for All research, a key challenge remains in how to reach the people in the most remote locations and to provide them with access to latest information, not to mention how to provide them the same equal access to education.

Organising workshops and training in rural areas

With Tespack’s Smart Solar Media (SSM) system, Plan International Zambia personnel and workers have been able to power their devices such as phones and laptops, but most importantly, they have had access to powering projectors and speakers as part of the SSM system, which has allowed them to showcase videos and other audiovisual content which has played a major role in carrying out workshops and awareness campaigns. As the campaign slogan goes, “seeing is believing, it has been utmost important to show visual materials and content to locals in order for them to engage better and to understand the information more effectively.

On average, each workshop or training session had around 50-80 participants. The SSM system lasted in use for around 6-8 hours which allowed participants to enjoy different audiovisual content for a full day.

“(SSM system) is a great tool for social mobilisations and helps to disseminate information in different formats to communities with no access to electricity”
Plan International Zambia 2022

Tespack’s SSM system also helped to collect data on the field by allowing Plan International Zambia personnel to carry out surveys and questionnaires on the screen with the participants answering the questions with their clickers. This supported the overall reduction of paper based data collection towards a more sustainable usage.

If you require more information or wish to start a partnership, feel free to get in touch with us on info@tespack.com