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Aurora for UNICEF, helping out the “invisible children”

Aurora is the first real-time monitoring and evaluation system that allows social workers to identify vulnerable children and deliver a minimum social services package.

Context

HIC (Helping the Invisible Children) is a project piloted by UNICEF Romania between 2011 – 2014, as part of the UNICEFs Community Based Services Programme in Romania. The aim of the project was to increase the impact of social protection policies for poor and socially excluded (invisible) children and their families. The issue of invisible children is highly relevant for rural communities in Romania. Preventive community services can be effective and financially efficient when implemented properly.

The software solution provided by Atta Systems was developed as a tool that would evaluate the vulnerabilities and the services provided. Aurora platform and mobile application became a complex software system of support for community workers and supervisors and a real-time monitoring and evaluation tool for vulnerable children policy advocates.

Impact

30.000+

Vulnerable Children Identified

300.000

People's data collected

400

Localities Included in Aurora

Our Support

We contributed by designing a scalable infrastructure, that can be rolled out at the national level. We created a platform that includes a wide range of user roles such as counseling teachers, social workers, and health mediators, and offered them the possibility to collaborate; We put together an easy-to-use interface that can be adopted by the social workers in a short time, even with limited technical capabilities. We made the in-field data collection application to work offline, due to connectivity limitations in the field (only rural communities included in the first phase of the project). Also, we ensured training for those who were directly involved in the community work, namely social workers, community health nurses, and the school counselors.

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Proposed Solution

Aurora was the first real-time monitoring and evaluation system that allows social workers to identify vulnerable children and deliver a minimum social services package to them to improve their situation. Aurora has been developed together with UNICEF Romania and is being used in over 400 communities in Romania.

Aurora is a complex system, with multiple components that interact with each other. It helps four types of users: social workers, supervisors, policy makers and the general public.

The mobile app for social workers facilitates the field work activities, especially in the diagnosis of vulnerabilities and the provision of services. Based on a grid of indicators, the social workers collect all relevant information about the children and their families.

The web platform allows access to data collected in the field, in real time, on different access levels: local, regional or national. Each level has access to powerful visualizations and reports. The social workers can access their data, plan interventions and manage their workload, together with their team at the local level.

The Aurora Public which is the newest addition to the Aurora system is a web app that provides information to the general public. The data is anonymized, it is statistical and can be used by scholars, NGOs and others.