There’s always a lot of things happening on and around World Children’s Day (20 November), and this year has been no exception! Yesterday we strengthened our partnership with Zain, a major telecommunications services company in the Middle East.
Zain is a pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East. Beginning in 1983 in Kuwait, it has since expanded rapidly across the region, and today it is a leading mobile voice and data services operator in seven Middle Eastern and Africa countries, providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 52 million active individual and business customers.
To commemorate this year’s World Children’s Day, we entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zain to mobilize and facilitate child helplines in the region, with the goal of promoting children’s rights, together with our members, throughout the countries in which it operates.
“As a leading telecom player whose business is based on providing meaningful connectivity, it is our responsibility to safeguard the most vulnerable members of our society from the dangers online activity may give rise to. We embrace this opportunity to continue working with Child Helpline International, highlighting the grave issue of online protection for children through this successful and thought-provoking media campaign.”
Bader Al-Kharafi, Vice-Chairman and Group CEO of Zain
“Our Sustainability strategy has targets under the Generation Youth pillar to address the issue of online safety for children. Zain is committed to ensuring we play our role in making the internet a safer space for everyone in general, and children in particular. We remain committed to raising awareness on internet safety and look forward to continuing to expand our work with Child Helpline International and others.”
Jennifer Suleiman, Zain Group Chief Sustainability Officer
Zain’s relationship with Child Helpline International commenced in 2014. Through this latest MoU, we will explore together ways to develop collaborations between child helplines and key child protection stakeholders including governments, as well as ways to evolve child helpline platform technology and expand services to include instant messaging and social media channels.
“We are delighted to renew our partnership with Zain. Our Memorandum of Understanding – which puts our child helpline members at its very heart – strengthens our position in the MENA region, and our joint ability to support and start up national child helplines in the countries in which Zain operates. Working together, we can help child helplines reach even more children and young people, helping to ensure that no child in the region is left unheard.”
Patrick Krens, Executive Director, Child Helpline International
Through our collaboration, Zain will be seeking ways of mobilizing child helplines across its footprint, as well as mapping out capacity-building and knowledge-sharing in areas of interest, based on the child helplines’ needs. These will relate to responsible use of online connectivity and child online protection, violence against children, and forcibly displaced children.
