On the 11^th of June, we were privileged to receive very important guests. The Assistant Director for Child Development Department from the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Mr. Sebastian Kitiku who was accompanied by the Ministry's communication officer Mr. Prudence Constantine visited our offices here in Dar es salaam.

The two gentlemen were on a media tour in Dar es salaam as part of the build-up towards this year’s Day of the African Child commemoration scheduled for June 16^th in Dodoma.

Mr Kitiku expressed his delight on the National Child Helpline’s management and teams on their success in offering 24-hour services to children and their families across the country. The Director further commended the formal partnership that exists between his Ministry and our organisation, for it has led to the success of the service. ‘This partnership has seen cooperation right from how the calls are received by the Helpline team to how the cases get handled by local government authority teams throughout the country.’ Observed the Director.

The visitors sat down with the Helpline’s team and chat about detailed partnership progress, a fruitful discussion on how best the government could improve its support to the Helpline in order to enhance service quality and effectiveness and on how to improve Helpline’s data management and sharing with the government and other stakeholders.

The gentlemen were taken through the Helpline 2020 reports and the impact the service has had, especially in surpassing 1 million contacts that year. They were very impressed by the figures of success.

On his part our Chief Executive Mr. Kiiya JK concluded:

‘It is our hope to continue strengthening the relationship we have with the government on the matter of child protection and the promotion of children’s and women's rights. And that we aspire to raise more awareness on the availability of the Helpline through visits like these. Together we believe we can ensure a future where all Children in the country feel safe and protected and the safeguarding of their rights are a high priority.’

This story was written by C-Sema’s Media Team.