In Botswana, many children grow up in challenging home environments. They face a risk of neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Although parents play a key role in creating a safe and conducive home environment for their children and protect them from harm, child abuse most often occurs in the home. As a response to these concerning issues, we developed the film Dithunya Tsa Rona “Our Flowers” to help teach and promote positive parenting throughout the country. We’ll be premiering the docudrama on June 16th, day of the African Child.
The film aims to improve parenting in Botswana and create safe homes for children, free from abuse. TV shows and drama series have proven to be effective tools in addressing and challenging social norms and creating positive behaviour change around societal issues. The 1-hour docudrama combines drama with documentary-style discourse, and features famous local actors and experts. The plot is a fictional story about a social worker investigating an increase in teenage pregnancies in a community in Botswana. During her search to discover the reasons behind this increase, she gets to know different families that all face various struggles of their own. However, they have one thing in common: what they do and how they parent affects the safety and well-being of their children.
Key messages and Positive Parenting
The film’s tagline is “Loving families nurture and protect.” The most important messages are:
- Caregivers play a critical role in preventing, stopping and reporting child abuse
- To create nurturing environments, caregivers can give one-on-one time and attention, positive guidance and create open communication.
- Call to action: Small changes have a huge impact! You can make a difference today.
It brings forward actionable steps for creating safer environments for children as well as positive parenting tips to mitigate risk of neglect as well as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. SSI will also be sharing positive parenting tips on our website soon, so stay tuned!
Reaching every Parent in Botswana
We want to ensure that every parent in Botswana gets the opportunity to receive the key messages from the docudrama. It will be aired on national television and streamed live on our Facebook page. After the premiere, it will also be shown in communities accompanied by dialogue sessions. We will also provide viewers with the opportunity to join our Pinagare parenting training groups for anyone who wants to further enhance their parenting skills.
You can help us reach every parent in Botswana! By contributing your support, you increase our distribution and visibility to ensure this film is available in as many homes as possible. Please go to our GofundMe page to make a contribution and help spread the word about this groundbreaking project. https://gofund.me/060472fa
Contributing Partners
We’re so grateful for the many partners who helped make this project come to life! They include the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Botswana Police Service, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Ministry of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, CSOs, UNICEF and USAID. The project is co-funded by the European Union, Stéphanie Lacroix Humanitarian Fund and FACET.