UNICEF Innovation

U-REPORT

Need

Despite incredible developments and technological advances across the globe, there are still many populations that are remote and deprived. For successful development, we must tap into the ideas from the people that are facing these challenges every day. But the youth that want to be a part of society and development are disconnected from the information that could empower them.

Succeed U-Report is a mobile phone, text based service designed to give young people a chance to voice their opinions on issues that they care about in their communities, encourage citizen-led development, and create positive change. U-Reporters join the programme by sending the SMS “join” to a short-code or following a U-Report twitter handle in response to advertising and partner field trainings advertising the programme. U-Reporters are then asked a series registration questions about their basic demographics, which enables responses to be analysed and messages targeted. These include age, gender, district, village and how they heard about U-Report. Having launched in May 2011 in Uganda there are now over 700,000 U-Reporters throughout 14 countries including Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia, Burundi, and Indonesia. The average age is 24 and 40% are female. There have been over 6 million messages sent by U-Reporters to UNICEF, with the data being mapped in real time. Approximately 30,000 young people sign up to U-Report somewhere in the world every week By the end of 2015, U-Report could be live in 20 countries reaching 1 million U-Reporters.