adminTafadzwa Zimoyo Cool Lifestyle Writer
Zimbabwe Youth Council in partnership with Econet Wireless and the United Nations Children’s Fund will on Thursday hand over cellphones to junior parliamentarians in Newlands.
In an interview with Cool Lifestyle, ZYC communications officer Innocent Katsande said the initiative will not only promote communication among the Junior MPs but develop the nation.
“Communication is important as we cannot do without it. We thank organisations such as Unicef and Econet who continue to assist children development in the country,” he said.
“I urge stakeholders to support children as they are the future generation. The cellphones are from Econet though I am yet to see the model of the cellphones,” he said.
He said child vice president Anthony Mpala was expected to grace the occasion.
The gesture by Econet Zimbabwe is aimed at empowering the Junior MPs with technology to enable them to fully represent their constituencies.
This is also in line with this year’s theme for the day of the African Child which is “Eliminating harmful social and cultural practices affecting children: Our collective responsibility”.
Meanwhile, the Child Friendly National Budget Initiative (CFNBI) Programme second level which promotes downstream training of children on child friendly budgets and advocacy has started working in all the provinces.
According to an official from ZYC, this follows the first level of the programme which focused on ‘‘Train-the-trainer’’ that saw the training of Junior Parliamentarians on child rights, child participation, child friendly budgets and advocacy.
“CFNBI is a programme that is aimed at empowering children to meaningfully participate in decision- making processes especially with regard to budgeting. It is being implemented by Zimbabwe Youth Council in partnership with Unicef, National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations and Save the Children with the support of Barclays Bank,” said the official.
Junior Parliamentarians in all constituencies have started consultations with other children, service providers and community leaders on issues affecting child development in their communities in relation to resource allocation.
He said the Junior Parliamentarians are expected to come up with reports on their findings which will then be used as reference points in contributing to the national budget so that the issues are addressed.
ZYC and its partners continue to work with the Government in the prevention of all forms of violence against children and by encouraging all stakeholders involved with children “to prohibit all forms of violence against children in all settings including all corporal punishment and harmful traditional practices’’.
Online Reporter