What they needed
The Spotlight Initiative is a UN and EU programme to end violence against women and girls. In Samoa, UNESCO's partner on the ground is the Samoa Victim Support Group (SVSG), whose case officers take the calls, run the shelter and work with Police, health providers and the courts. Every case lived on paper. Finding an update, managing a referral or reporting back to a partner agency meant hours in the files.
What we built
A survivor CRM for the case officers. A call or a walk-in is logged from the first conversation: the officer records the caller, the incident and whether it is an emergency, and the case is created or updated from there. Notes, relationships, aliases and full case histories sit in one place, with 15 referral pathways to Police, health, legal and shelter services. A reporting dashboard gives SVSG and UNESCO the figures by incident type, contributing factor, village, gender and time of day, which gives Samoa a national dataset on domestic and gender-based violence.
What changed
More than 1,100 calls and 700 cases have gone through the CRM. Manual admin per case dropped by around three quarters, and the hours that went into paper go to survivors instead.
Where it goes next
The engagement is ongoing. New features and data capabilities are added as SVSG's work changes.
