The voice of every young person matters: More than 10,000 U-Reporters are currently registered on the platform in Madagascar

Antananarivo, 6 November, 2022 – UNICEF Madagascar celebrates the membership of more than 10,800 young people on the free expression platform via U-Report SMS. Initiated in its support programme for the participation of young people, the tool inspires an exceptional interest and reveals the essential place of young people as regards themes related to the development of the country and society.

Indeed, young people are invited to seek information, discuss and express themselves on subjects that affect their direct environment such as education, climate change, health, COVID-19 vaccination, child protection, Gender-Based Violence, inclusion and disability… U-Reporters are engaging through social networks, in particular but mainly by subscribing on their mobile phone. Sending the word “ureport” free of charge by SMS to the Number 301 on Telma, Airtel and Orange ensures that they take part in the survey and make their point of view known. More than twenty surveys have been carried out to date, the results of which are available on the U-Report Madagascar website: https://madagascar.ureport.in/

“The voice of young people is a real advocacy power to which special attention must be paid. It is important to know what they think of our programmes and the situation in their country, to understand how they experience their situation as young people. For UNICEF, this feedback helps us to provide the appropriate responses and adapt the programmes that we wish to deploy to be as close as possible to their needs," says Gilles Chevalier, UNICEF Madagascar Acting Representative and Deputy Representative in charge of Programmes.

This strong participation of young people in the U-Report platform has already borne fruit. U-Report enabled over 3,000 young people to bring their voices ahead of the Transforming Education Summit held in Paris in September for improving education in Madagascar. The youth were invited to express themselves with regard to the quality of education, internet access at school, health and safety at school, resources, and skills at school. Following this, a new draft Guiding Principles for Education Act was submitted to the National Assembly this week, notably mentioning 10 years of compulsory schooling from the age of 5, to be divided into one preschool year, six years for primary school and three years of high-school and middle-school.

Since the beginning of the year, the U-Report platform has recorded a membership rate of more than 65 per cent, of which 53 per cent are girls, i.e. more than 5,360 young people. 36 per cent of them are between 20 and 24 years old, and 29 per cent are between 15 and 19 years old. U-report also receives an average response rate of more than 88 per cent on all the surveys already carried out. Madagascar is one of the 93 countries hosting the platform, which includes a total of more than 26,000,000 members.