Tag: safety

Digital Awareness, Empowerment and Storytelling

By Prof. G. “Hari” Harindranath

Digital Awareness, Empowerment and Storytelling: A Digital Literacy, Online Safety and Video Storytelling Training Programme for Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Cape Town, South Africa, 29 June – 4 July 2026

Prof. Harindranath was awarded £3660 Impact Support Funding from Royal Holloway, University of London to support impact activities delivered through partner organisation, Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA), in Cape Town aimed at addressing critical digital literacy challenges affecting migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in South Africa, focusing especially on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech. Building on the collaborative work undertaken with migrants in Cape Town and Johannesburg during the UKRI GCRF Migration for Development and Equality (MIDEQ) Hub’s ‘Digital Technologies and Inequalities’ work package led by Prof G. Hari Harindranath, Prof Tim Unwin and Dr Maria Rosa Lorini, this project delivered training activities to strengthen migrants’ digital competencies to ensure inclusion, protection, and participation. The training involved digital literacy, including the use of social media and online safety, and video storytelling, to provide vulnerable migrants with the ability to communicate effectively, share their experiences, and access opportunities.

Prior research through MIDEQ’s work package on digital technologies and inequality had highlighted the risks that result from limited digital literacy including online scams, misinformation, and exclusion from economic and social opportunities. Several intervention activities were delivered through MIDEQ including digital literacy training and video storytelling training to empower migrants to directly communicate their experiences in a context characterised by high levels of online and offline xenophobia and where migrant voices are often under-represented in mainstream narratives. The current project extended our MIDEQ work through another tranche of training, on this occasion led by our partner SIHMA, ensuring that such activities are embedded within their ongoing organisational activities and priorities.

The training was delivered under difficult circumstances as it coincided with a period of acute national tension around migration and anti-immigrant violence in South Africa during the last week of June 2026. The training was therefore compressed into five days rather than the six originally planned and due to safety concerns it was attended by 12 migrants rather than the 20 who had initially signed up. However, the project was still able to deliver important outcomes for those who participated and helped extend and sustain the legacy of our digital intervention work with migrants in South Africa and with SIHMA. Participant testimonials attest to improved technical digital and video storytelling skills acquisition, growth in confidence and self-awareness, better understanding of online consent and safety awareness (see their videos on videos Introspection and Thank you). In addition, this project also helped reconnect the participants with some of the migrants we had originally worked with during the MIDEQ project, facilitating continued community engagement and advocacy with institutional support from SIHMA. Their reflections on our ongoing work provide a very important source of understanding about the impact such initiatives can have, particularly when it is appreciated that everyone trained will then go on and share their knew knowledge with their families, friends and peers.

We thank Royal Holloway for the opportunity to continue our work in South Africa through this impact activity that helped reconnect with migrants previously trained through our MIDEQ project, build digital skills among a new and diverse group of vulnerable migrants, all while helping to embed and institutionalise such activities within the partner organisation in South Africa [for our related work in South America and Asia, see our country-level research pages for Brazil and Nepal)

A full report by our partner SIHMA is available here.

Heloisa Melino reflecting on digital security on the Dia Nacional da Visibilidade Lésbica in Brazil as part of the Projeto LBTs em Poder

Heloisa Melino, who has worked with the ICT4D Collective in Brazil, has produced a powerful reflection in a reel on Instagram on the 29th August 2026, the Dia Nacional da Visibilidade Lésbica, as part of the Projeto LBTs em Poder (LBTS in Power) in which she argues that “A nossa visibilidade só é plena quando vem acompahada de segurança, proteção e direito à existência e à comunicação” (Our visibility is only complete when accompanied by safety, protection, and the right to existence and communication). In her video on digital security and mental health, she reflects on the resources we developed together and are summarised in our page on our research-practice in Brazil. She firmly asserts that “Discutir visibilidade hoje passa obrigatoriamente por entender os tgerritórios digitais e exige autodefesa e cuidado consciente com of que comparthilamos para a nossa proteção individual e coletiva” (Discussing visibility today inevitably requires an understanding digital territories and demands self-defence and conscious care regarding what we share, for the sake of our individual and collective protection).

Go to these links to find out more about our work on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech and on our research-practice in Brazil.

Guidance for safe, wise and secure use of digital tech by small organisations in Nepali

Following Prof. G. ‘Hari’ Harindranath’s recent research-practice visit to Nepal in January, we are delighted to share the Nepali version of our free guidance notes on the safe, wise and secure use of digital technologies for small, particularly civil society, organisations. This builds on our previous cyber-security related work, and is one of the outputs from our productive partnership with ACORAB. Its main sections are on:

  • What is of most importance to you? Plan to protect
  • Know the sorts of attack that you are likely to encounter
  • Your staff: highest risk, and first line of defence
  • Data Security and Management
  • Your Organisation’s Digital Systems
  • Your Website
  • Social Media
  • E-mails

The report concludes with six main recommendations for small civil society organisations:

Guidance for small civil society organisations on using digital tech safely, wisely and securely

During one of our research visits to South Africa in January 2024 it became abundantly clear that many small and poorly resourced civil society organisations have little experience of using digital tech safely, wisely and securely. Drawing on good practices across the world, as well as our subsequent experiences in and with colleagues from Brazil, Nepal and Mozambiaue, we have therefore produced a short (12 page) guide to help such organisations understand the risks they are at from the use of digital tech and how they can be mitigated. This contains useful tips, graphics that can be copied and reversioned into posters, as well as links to more detailed sourcers of information, and it is freely available in English under a Creative Commons CC BY SA license.

Please get in touch using our contact page should you have any comments on how this could be improved or to discuss developing versions in other languages or for other contexts, and do please share information about this resource through your own networks.

This forms part of the ICT4D Collective’s ongoing research-practice in the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech, further details of which are available here.