• Supporting Mental Health Outpatients in Rural Rwanda

    As in many other developing countries, there are hardly any trained professionals for mental health care in Rwanda. Especially for people living in poverty or far away from urban centres, there is therefore no or hardly any suitable help. As a rule, many mentally ill people cannot be adequately supported.

  • Education as a Resource for Female Empowerment

    Education has always been entwined with class, gender, and ethnicity. Nowhere is this relationship more prominent than Sub-Saharan Africa. According to a UNICEF study, Guinea, the Central African Republic, Senegal, Cameroon, Benin, Niger, and Rwanda are the countries that spend the smallest percentage of public education spending on the poorest households. All of these countries spend 10% or less on educating the poorest households while dedicating 30% to 50% of their public education funds to the wealthiest households.

     

  • Fighting the Stigma of Leprosy with Digital Audio

    Leprosy is still a thing. The number of new cases reported globally to the World Health Organization in 2019 was more than 200,000. An estimated 2 to 3 million people are living with leprosy-related disabilities globally. In 2019, the countries with the highest number of new diagnoses were India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Over half of all new cases of leprosy are diagnosed in India, which remains home to a third of the world’s poor, a group disproportionately affected by the disease.

  • The Relationship Between Female Empowerment and Education

    Many organizations and governments seek to achieve female empowerment through education. Although it is not the only means of achieving it nor the only one stakeholders should be focusing on, it is certainly an important aspect of female empowerment and a powerful tool for change, especially because it allows women to gain access to knowledge that will help them in the agency processes that play a big role in empowering women (Kabeer 2005, 16).

  • Recording Audio Content for Community Outreach

    Using your own audio messages in combination with Audiopedia's content can be a good idea if you want to build a digital community outreach for your NGO. In combination with WhatsApp, it can become quite a powerful tool.

  • Gender-based violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Gender-based violence in Sub-Saharan Africa is a large issue that has not yet been adequately addressed. According to the UN, women in sub-Saharan Africa are at greater risk of intimate partner violence than in most other regions of the world.

  • Smart Development Fund

    Open Source for Equality was created with financial support from the Smart Development Fund, a joint initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the European Commission (EC).

  • Auma - Augmented Audio

    Augmented audio (auma.js) is an open source framework that provides illustrated and interactive audio content.

  • General outlook of female empowerment and gender equality in Sub-Saharan Africa

    Female empowerment is often thought of as a critical aspect of achieving gender equality. Gender equality has been one of the UN’s greatest priorities for a few decades now: the organization has given it strong consideration in the Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda, in the Millennium Development Goals established in the year 2000, and in the still relevant Beijing Platform for Action from 1995. Worldwide, progress has been made, but Sub-Saharan Africa still remains one of the regions further behind in terms of gender equality and related issues affecting women.