A new cell phone app links abused women and children in Diepsloot in northern Johannesburg to care services in the township. A study released this week revealed more than half of men in Diepsloot admit to having raped or beaten a woman in the past 12 months. 

Launch of the app:

10 am, Wednesday 30th November

Afrika Tikkun

6 Peach Street, Extension 6, Diepsloot West 

VIMBA! DATA-FREE APP OFFERS A LIFELINE TO SURVIVORS OF ABUSE   

Vimba Helpline, a cell phone app, that will make it easier for abused women and children in Diepsloot in northern Johannesburg to access help, will be launched on November 30.

More than half of men in Diepsloot have abused a woman sexually or physically, according to the baseline results of the Sonke Change Trial, which was conducted in Diepsloot this year.

“Yet, very few women in Diepsloot know where or how to access help,” says Brown Lekekela from The Green Door, the only organisation in the township where women and children who have been abused can find temporary shelter.

The Mail & Guardian newspaper’s health journalism centre, Bhekisisa, has partnered with Diepsloot-based organisations working in the field of gender-based violence to create the Vimba Helpline. The helpline will make it easier for women and children in the township to know what to do, and where to go, when they’ve been abused. 

The Green Door, Sonke Gender Justice, Lawyers Against Abuse, Africa Tikkun and the South African Depression and Anxiety Group have all provided input for the app. These partners will be using and promoting the Vimba Helpline, which Bhekisisa has funded thanks to the overall support it receives from its main donor the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Vimba Helpline works by a user dialling *134*403# from a cell phone. This notifies a server to send a series of three menus asking the user where they are in Diepsloot and what sort of help they need.

An SMS will be sent to the user’s phone containing the phone numbers and addresses of the organisations in Diepsloot that help victims of gender-based violence, as well as the police and ambulance service. If they indicated that they have been raped an SMS containing five things to remember is also sent to them.

“It’s a simple solution to a massive problem to help people know where to access help,” says Lekekela.

The Vimba Helpline works on any type of cell phone and users don’t need airtime or data to use it. 

“It was important to ensure that the people the app was intended to help were able to use it,” says Laura Grant, Bhekisisa’s project manager for the app. “Ninety percent of households in Diepsloot have access to a cellphone, according to South Africa’s 2011 Census, but very few – only about one in five households – use their phones to access the internet because they can’t afford the cost of data.”

The app uses “unstructured supplementary service data”, more commonly known as USSD, which is a way cell phones communicate with a service provider that does not require data and there is no need to download anything on your phone.

The Vimba Helpline also functions as a way to collect data – such as the date and time of day users dial the helpline, where in Diepsloot they are, what sort of help they need – which will be used to identify trends in gender-based violence in Diepsloot, areas that are violence hotspots and places where more support services are needed.

“The app couldn’t have come at a better time for Diepsloot,” says Sonke Gender Justice’s community manager, Dumisani Rebombo. “Vimba Helpline is being launched as part of our 16 days of activism against gender-based violence campaign. We’d like more women to report abuse and also get help. With the app we will help them to do so.”

For more information, images and media interviews:

Mia Malan,
Director and editor, Bhekisisa,
Mail & Guardian Health Journalism Centre,
Phone: 011 250 7300, or 082-766-9714