Child Protection Organizations
Partnership with child protection organizations:
Our Chairman (Pieter van Vuuren) completed a survey amongst 50 people in Paarl. He wanted to find out how much the general public knows about child protection. He wanted to find out if the public knows that child protection branches must raise funds to pay for their social workers. You can only successfully address problems if you understand these problems. The development team only has one change to ensure that child protection branches can implement action plans that will ensure constant financial support from the public.
The following questions were asked to people randomly selected that he believed would be above the age of 18. He asked the questions in the following order and only asked the next question after the first one was answered. (It was important to understand how the public will feel about the Enjoy Life phone app being developed and also to see what media structures and messages in media should be used to get the best results):
1) Do you know the following Non-profit organizations: ACVV, Badisa and Child Welfare?
Answers:
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27 persons didn’t recognize the names of the organizations at all
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18 persons knew about ACVV
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2 persons knew about Badisa
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3 persons knew about Child Welfare
We think that more people knew about ACVV in Paarl, as there are 3 branches in Paarl. We know that these answers will be different depending on in which area people are approached for a survey.
2) Do you know what these organizations do?
(This question was immediately asked without explaining to the people anything about the project.)
Answers:
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16 persons said they think it has to do something about working with children. (We think they made the connection with the name Child Welfare and they had a few seconds to think about the question. The first question was asked without them expecting the question)
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29 persons said they have no idea.
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The 3 who knew about Child Welfare and the 2 who knew about Badisa were able to explain the services of the organizations.
Our Chairman explained to the people who didn’t know about the services in short what the organizations do and why he want to ask the following questions.
3) Out of curiosity, do you know how these organizations are funded?
Answers:
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6 persons said they have no idea.
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27 persons said they think the Government pays for Social workers.
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13 persons said they think that the organizations receive donations and do fundraising events to source funds
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5 persons knew that the organizations have to do fundraising to help fund shortfalls the organizations experience. They knew that Government only contributes towards a percentage of the salaries.
Our chairman explained to all the persons who did not knew that these organizations receive contributions from the government and also relies on donations and they do host fundraising events. He didn’t give them details so that he can ask the following questions.
4) Who do you think donate to support the Social workers?
Answers:
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9 persons answered: “We have no idea, to tell you the truth, it is not things we think about”
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22 persons said they think it is bigger companies such as Vodacom, MTN or perhaps the mining companies.
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11 persons said they think it is the churches that donate funds.
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8 persons said they think that it is smaller companies and individuals that donate funds to help Child Welfare branches
It was not unexpected to receive feedback where the public think that larger companies are the ones that provide the funding to support Child Welfare branches.
5) Do you know how much funds these organizations receive from the government?
Answers:
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31 persons said they have no idea
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11 persons guessed between 50% and 90%
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8 persons made excuses and asked that we mail them, or if it was possible for them to visit a website and read more. Our chairman thanked them for their time without asking the last questions)
6) If you have the ability to help these organizations, by simply to download a free phone app in June 2018, called Enjoy Life, and the app offers you restaurant deals from as little as R20 per steak, and fast food deals sponsored far below cost to the fast food companies, will you download the free app and buy these exceptional deals from the best restaurants and fast-food companies to support the child protection branches? You will also support caretakers of bedridden patients financially if you use the Enjoy Life app.
Answers:
Most people were confused and amazed by this question which was expected and the following questions were raised and answered:
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27 persons asked how will these exceptional deals help Child Protection if they as users get such exceptional food deals? Our chairman explained that when the app users provide a service rating to help business owners ensure that their staff provides great service, the companies donate the gross profit on the first drink to the Homecare Foundation which is then paid to the Child Protection branches. All these people said that is an exceptional plan!
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8 persons also wanted to know how this will work and after explanation agreed that it is an exceptional plan, they however asked will it cost them a lot on data? Our chairman explained that the Enjoy Life app will have a function that you can set which will only open the app if the phone is on a Wi-Fi network. This will enable users to work on the data that the restaurants and fast-food businesses provide, making everything free for the user.
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7 persons said that this sound confusing, is there a website that will explain how it work in detail before they can answer? Our chairman gave them the website address and explained that we will only launch our media in June 2018, which will explain more detail to the public. There will be talk shows on tv where the phone app and the benefits will be discussed. Also on radio shows. This is only a survey that will help the team to plan exactly what media structures should be used to get the information to the public, an we also need to understand how well the public know the Child Protection organizations and the important services these organizations provide.
It became clear to us that the public in general knows little about the financial pressure child protection branches are working under. They in general think that government or larger organizations is responsible to help protect children. They do not know that ACVV, Badisa & Child Welfare branches rely on normal individuals to help with financial contributions. We also know that we will have to plan our media campaigns exceptionally well to ensure that a large number of individuals get involved to help child protection branches.
We know that if we successfully inform the public about the challenges that ACVV, Badisa & Child Welfare branches face, and if we inform them that Government is doing its best to help with the funding of social workers, but that child protection teams still need the public’s support on an individual basis, that we will already change the destiny of ACVV, Badisa & Child Welfare branches.
You will read about numerous action plans, but one of the simplest things could be just to inform the public that child protection management teams are required to raise funds to help pay the social worker’s salaries and to pay the administrative costs. It is at the moment difficult to get this message to the public. The Enjoy Life phone app that you will read about will within months take this message to millions. This alone will help child protection branches tremendously in their fundraising drives.