Gender Based Violence is one of the Global issues affecting communities today. In Papua New Guinea, various efforts have been made to curb this issue amongst the Government, NGOs, Churches and other Donor agencies. An interesting project recently being piloted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) here in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is aimed at easing the burden of collecting Gender Based Violence (GBV) data throughout the country, available for access by the National Government, United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO). This pilot project is currently underway and selected provinces (National Capital District, Morobe, Milne Bay and East New Britain) are now undergoing workshops aimed at training Frontline GBV organisations to supply data to a central hub which will then be generated and used by the Government, UN or WHO.
As of 18th March 2016, I was contacted by the UNDP office here in Port Moresby to coordinate and manage the National GBV Data collection project, which is currently rolled out. The contact came after a nomination made by the current Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, who is our head of school here at the University of PNG.
With the help of improved technology today that requires little knowledge on programming, one can develop a mobile application for any specific use and install it on any mobile device for use. This is exactly what happened in this UNDP-led project where Gerald Okello, a health specialist from Uganda currently working in Madang as a volunteer with the Voluntary Service Organisation (VSO), worked on transforming the application from traditional paper-based format to electronic format, deploy-able on mobile devices.
During the implementation of this GBV Data Collection (Pilot) project, I was invited to travel to various provinces with international Health specialist (VSO) and GBV/FSV Case Management Specialist and Coordinator (UNDP) conduct training on the use of the mobile app that was created. Participating agencies dealing with GBV issues were taken through a session on how to enter data, track progress and do other tasks with the app using the tablet. Following this session, members were given a tablet, bounded by an agreement with UNDP to take ownership of each of the tablets and information collected.
As of the beginning of May 2016, I am managing the National GVB Data Collection project, updating UNDP on progresses and results of incoming data as well as generating reports and statistics on collected data.
To me, it's an amazing project to work on especially managing and coordinating the records of incoming data from over 50 field workers (for the pilot project only, which will increase to over hundreds of workers during main project) and having manage data on-the-move and at your finger-tip.
With the help of improved technology today that requires little knowledge on programming, one can develop a mobile application for any specific use and install it on any mobile device for use. This is exactly what happened in this UNDP-led project where Gerald Okello, a health specialist from Uganda currently working in Madang as a volunteer with the Voluntary Service Organisation (VSO), worked on transforming the application from traditional paper-based format to electronic format, deploy-able on mobile devices.
To me, it's an amazing project to work on especially managing and coordinating the records of incoming data from over 50 field workers (for the pilot project only, which will increase to over hundreds of workers during main project) and having manage data on-the-move and at your finger-tip.
