Of the 2 million children living in Lebanon, more than 80% of them have been violently disciplined or abused, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). And Lebanon’s government, unable to process the hundreds of thousands of newly reported child abuse cases each year, is looking to nongovernment organizations such as Himaya for help.
Founded in 2009, Himaya employs child protection specialists including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and lawyers who manage 1,500 child-abuse cases each year across the country.
"We're working with the Ministry of Public Health and UNICEF to develop child protection policies for healthcare facilities in Lebanon, and collaborating with the Ministry of the Interior to train its internal security force how to communicate with child victims of abuse," says Himaya Executive Director Lama Yazbeck.
Nonviolent Intervention
In many cases, Himaya's team works directly with parents on nonviolent communication techniques, such as how to observe their children's behavior and understand its motivation before rushing to blame and punishment. When parents are uncooperative, however, Himaya solicits approval from juvenile court judges to take children out of their homes and move them to "safe places" either with other family members or at Himaya's temporary housing facilities or partner NGO shelters. "We conduct an assessment prior to making any decision," says Yazbeck. "Once our evaluation is complete, we'll be able to identify and develop the proper action plan."
For this kind of intervention to work, Himaya needs to identify the abuse quickly and get involved early to help prevent the long-term physical, intellectual, and psychological repercussions associated with child abuse and neglect.
But until recently, getting involved early was hard to do. Himaya lacked the technology and systems infrastructure to swiftly manage its growing number of child abuse cases and match them to rehabilitation programs.
Confined to spreadsheet solutions, Himaya’s program specialists entered handwritten case notes into worksheets, a process that took about five business days to complete each month. After the cases were entered and the spreadsheets consolidated, they were sent to Himaya headquarters, where evaluation officers had to manually clean the data, merge it into the core program database, and then spend another 10 days extracting the information into a report.
After 15 days of manual data entry, “still, there were errors,” says Yazbeck.
Preventing Abuse
Today, Yazbeck’s team uses Oracle Sales Cloud to upload cases directly into the application, which then updates Himaya’s core system automatically. “Our work is organized, and clean,” says Yazbeck. “If there are missing components, the Oracle application alerts us. Reports are generated in real time with a click of a button.”
The cloud application also helps Yazbeck run analysis of prevention data by tracking a child’s age, gender, and case information. At the end of each month, Yazbeck’s team can identify the types of abuse cases they are managing in each region, how many were reported by family members, and how those compare to ones detected through Himaya’s intervention and outreach programs. Teams can also determine the highest number of cases for each category of abuse. “This lets us know which types of programs and specialists we need to add in order to address the needs of each region,” Yazbeck says.
Entering detailed program data into the cloud also gives the area teams real-time insight into abuser profiles—such as level of education, income, birthplace, and criminal history. These combined insights help teams ascertain the types of abuse that are most likely to occur in a particular situation and when. “This doesn’t just help us respond more quickly with new or enhanced programs.” says Yazbeck. “It also helps us train children to identify an abuser and where to go to get help.”
For example, in regions where there are a lot of sexual abuse cases, Yazbeck’s teams are going into the field to educate children, parents, and teachers. “We’re speaking at private schools, in refugee camps, and on television and radio stations,” she says. “We’re also running awareness campaigns on social media.”
But increasing awareness and improving program performance are only part of Himaya’s growth strategy. To fund its mission in the future, the NGO will depend on individuals and partner organizations such as UNICEF, International Social Services, and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
“Oracle Sales Cloud has helped us generate real-time reports and statistics that we can share with our donors and partners,” says Yazbeck. “This not only helps boost our rank as a low-risk NGO, but it also allows us to demonstrate the efficacy of our work and where we need more funding.”
Sasha Banks-Louie is a brand journalist for Oracle.
