GIZ proudly presents: Likeleli Khotle for the Social Hero of the Digital Female Leader Award 2020 – Root for this finalist!

From over 800 submissions to the Digital Female Leader Award – an initiative of Global Digital Women, our colleague Ms Likeleli Khotle from Lesotho is in the race for the Social Hero Award as one of the three finalists that was voted among 45,000. Working at the Regional Programme Partnerships for Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls in Southern Africa (PfP), she is contributing to breaking the silence on gender based violence - with the Nokaneng App that was launched in Lesotho. 

High levels of acceptance of violence against women and girls. Justified wife beating. Silence. Re-victimization and stigmatization of survivors. Lack of solidarity among women and girls. Feelings of shame…And the list goes on. To some of us, these are words that describe an undesirable state of women across the globe. But for Likeleli, this is the reality of daily life in her home country Lesotho - a country where she was born and bred – and where she is contributing to social change.  In particular, Likeleli leads a flagship project on digital solutions and contributed to the development of the Nokaneng App - an innovative smartphone app and complementary SMS service.  The digital solutions empower women and girls with knowledge on forms of violence, their rights, available service providers, SMS and alarm emergency features, as well as an online forum for peer support for survivors, known as a Safe Space. 

Taking a Multi-Stakeholder Partnership (MSP) approach, content development, content management and dissemination of the digital solutions have been done in collaboration with government partners, civil society organizations and private sector actors such as Vodacom. The digital solutions are available in two of Lesotho’s official languages – Sesotho and English, and collectively have over 5,000 users.  Subscribers are not charged any data as they interact with the content. 

The Smartphone App is available for Android phones from the Google Play Store. 

The awards will be adjudicated by a high level panel of global digital experts. The winners will be announced on 28 November 2020. Let’s all support our very own Likeleli on Social Media!
Nokaneng flyer