The Digital Village project hopes to modernise and advance the daily operations of the SOS Children’s village houses. The technology will be utilized to improve the quality of education, to train and build the care-givers’ capacities, and to increase awareness on child safeguarding issues, building and enhancing youth employment skills, facilitating virtual and effective communication between the programme participants and the administration. All those ideas can be achieved through linking the technology training, ICT infrastructure and the programme needs together.
The project was launched at the Rustenburg and Pieterm aritzburg programmes in 2017. The two villages were selected because they are both different in design, one being a traditional children’s village and the other a community integrated programme. The project is set to be rolled out to two more villages by the end of 2018.