Digitalisation offers immense opportunities for advocacy, but most rural communities are yet to maximize the digital dividend due to a combination of reasons that are rooted in connectivity, hardware, software, and skills divide! Above all, there’s a general lack of a digital mindset.

It is because of such a background, a two-day Digital Tools for Rural Advocacytraining for KWID was facilitated by GIZ CUSP (Kabale) project, KWID Organizational Capacity Development.

The community is mobilized to network, make observations, and raise concerns with KWID branches. They can send text messages, WhatsApp (where enabled), or a hybrid of digital tools and physical interactions. They can also take pictures and capture voices where possible. These are done by resource persons like VHTs, para social workers, the church through outreach services, sensitisation and counselling programmes.

KWID Branches gather information from the community and share it with the secretariat. This information is collected through home visits, community dialogues/meetings. This can be through phone calls, text messages to a designated number at the secretariat and through an internal WhatsApp group.

The Secretariat receives information from the branches and processes it into meaningful sets of data for advocacy. They can then go ahead and share this information with duty bearers, donors, development partners by Email, WhatsApp, Physical interactions and in form of regular messages for Facebook, Twitter and the Website.

These digital tools, (Email, Website, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook) are used for:

• Mobilization and sensitization of the target audience.
• Accountability to members and partners.
• Reach out tools to the target audiences.
• Create awareness of what KWID is about and what is going on.
• Advertisement and marketing of KWID
• Fundraising for different projects
• Internal and external communication
• Advocacy.