1. Online Counselling – Investment - in Children and Youth Project Coordinator; Lamese Mukadam Presenter; Joan van Niekerk

2. Childline South Africa is an effective non-profit organization that works collectively to protect children from all forms of violence and to create a culture of children’s rights in South Africa. The network consists of an affiliation of 9 provincial Childline offices to which a 24hr toll free counselling line is directed. There is a call centre in each province, and collectively the line receives about a million calls a year

4. Why decentralised call centres The volume of calls received Health, Welfare and Education are provincial own affairs and NGO services differ from province to province Languages differ from province to province so having decentralised call centres with local counsellors enables children to talk to a counsellor in their own language

5. Training on the call centre data collection programme

6. Other Childline Services Therapy for abused and traumatised children and their families Child abuse prevention and education programmes Preparation of child witnesses for court Training – volunteers and child protection workers Work with offenders who remain in the community – particularly children who commit offences Law and policy analysis – and advocacy on reform and implementation Safe house care

7. MXit communicates through the internet. Messages are sent and received via the mobile internet GPRS (General Packet Radio Service/3G), rather than standard SMS technology. Once registered, users can invite contacts. To accept or decline an invitation is at the discretion of the user.

8. The Online Counselling Project In addition to the toll free line and other Childline Services, and in an attempt to keep up with the ever growing use of technology amongst the youth, Childline South Africa is running a pilot project offering online (web-based) counselling through MXit. What is Mxit? A service that facilitates affordable communication – that like any other communication medium can be used productively or misused.

9. Childline South Africa went live on with online counselling on the 25 th May 2009 Online Counselling and assistance is being offered nationally Monday – Saturday, from 2pm – 6pm. Our service is available to South African youth under the age of 21 years as well as to adults with concerns about children Online counsellors are Durban based and operate from the Childline South Africa National office. We have 3 chat rooms on MXit where a user can chat with a Childline Counsellor one on one in a private and confidential environment. Currently we have 12 volunteer counsellors who work shifts manning the chat rooms.

10. The project is in operation with the assistance of our volunteer counsellors who have been working hard and tirelessly since going live. We have had an overwhelming response to the online counselling and after only one week in operation we had to increase the number of available counsellors on each shift to try and meet the high demand from MXit users. Up to 21 children have “queued” to get into a chat room to chat to our counsellor at any one time. We have recruited and trained three groups of volunteer counsellors and we are currently planning the training of the fourth group.

11. Our experience so far… In a four hour shift, a counsellor speaks to an average of 4 to 6 people depending on the nature of the conversations. At any given time during the shift there are approximately 21 people waiting in a queue for each counsellor. Counsellors are faced with many concerns ranging from relationship problems and school problems to different forms of abuse, self mutilation and suicide.

12. We have identified highly sexualised behaviour. Our statistics are presently being analysed and identified from counsellor feed backs reports there are 4 common issues that counsellors deal with; -Sexual abuse -Relationship problems -Bullying -Self harming

13. Statistics In the past 11 months -1829 children have been counselled -1456 entries into the chat room have been “non-responsive” – that is the person has entered the chatroom but not communicated or left.

14. Data Collection The programme is linked to our national data collection system so the same information is collected – where available – from every “visitor” to the counselling “chat” room Most children/youth do not share the full range of personal details and many use pseudonyms – the same is true of the telephone counselling line.

15. Counsellor and manager care Counsellors are offered debriefing at the end of each shift This is usually reviewing “Chats” for that shift and discussing those that the counsellor selects for review A meeting with counsellors is held once a month and the month’s work is reviewed and difficult “Chats” are discussed at greater length, their impact on the counsellor and their management.

16. Counsellor and manager care Counsellors generally find children/youth who discuss suicide the most difficult with respect to managing personal impact One of the “stressors” is not knowing – as many of the children/youth do not identify themselves/their contact details knowing the outcome of the counselling session and follow up is not possible However an effort is made to link these chat room visitors to face to face services This is similar to the challenge faced by counsellors on the telephone crisis line.

17. Counsellor and Manager Care The online counselling project manager also receives regular debriefing and is offered consultation by senior staff whenever required/requested. Where appropriate and sufficient details have been given to enable this, children and youth at risk and in need of face to face services are referred to appropriate service providers by the manager of the project.

18. MXit explained MXit is an instant messaging application developed in South Africa that runs on your mobile. The technological innovation stems from Stellenbosch, developed by a company MXit Lifestyle (PTY)LTD. The service was launched in 2005

19. When chatting one on one, your service provider bills you at normal GPRS/3G rates, which works out at less than 1 (one) South African cent per message. Moola on the other hand, is MXit’s very own currency. Tradepost services are purchased with Moola.

20. Users can thus visit the chat rooms by purchasing Moola (MXit currency). One Moola equals one South African cent. With 200 Moola (=R2) a user can send 100 messages in a chat room. MXit therefore describes this free mobile application as “an instant messaging solution that offers low cost communication and entertainment to their users.”

21. Getting started… Cell phone with GPRS function from your cell phone, go to www.mxit.com/wap, select the application suited to you, either MXit Mobile, MXit PC or MXit Blackberry and follow the very simple download instructions. (These may vary with different network providers and cell phone makes). www.mxit.com/wap Once you have downloaded MXit, you can find it under applications or games

22. How to access a Childline counsellor through MXit Once you have downloaded MXit you then need to Register, again follow very simple prompts. Then Login and your ready to use the many applications available to MXit users. These can all be found under ‘Tradepost’. Enter the ‘Tradepost’ and you will find the Childline application, it is option number 2. From here on simply follow the prompts and you will be on your way to speaking with a counsellor in either of the three available chat rooms.

24. If you would like more information on the MXit Online Counselling project please contact Lamese Mukadam Project Co-ordinator Joan van Niekerk, Manager Training & Advocacy Childline South Africa Tel/Fax: +27 31 563 5718 Email: research@childlinesa.org.zaresearch@childlinesa.org.za joanvn@childlinesa.org.za www.childlinesa.org.za THANK YOU!

25. Online counsellors hard at work