The Child Security Index (CSI) campaign aims to draw attention to the security risks facing children and adolescents in Brazil and around the world. #MakingChildrenSafer, the campaign’s slogan, highlights the ways in which young people perceive and experience violence at home, in their schools and public spaces. The campaign consists of publications, infographics and a short video to be released in mainstream and social media between August and September 2016. A key goal is to show how the CSI is an effective digital tool for gathering data on perceived insecurity among children and teens.

The CSI is an app based on KOBO that tracks the experience of children and youth in violence-affected areas. It allows for the documentation of spatial and temporal trends in the home, school and community. Data generated by the app is uploaded to an interactive administrative dashboard.

The CSI prototype is being tested in several cities across Brazil as part of multi-year project supported by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation (2013-2016) and Google (2014-2016).

The CSI has already been applied in 14 Brazilian cities of different regions of the country in partnership with several  organizations: Instituto Bola Pra Frente (Rio de Janeiro); Shine-a-Light and the Federal University of Pernambuco (Recife); Neca, Nepsid, CEU Parque Anhanguera (São Paulo) and EMEFM Antônio Alves Veríssimo (SP), and World Vision (Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Rio de Janeiro, Amazonas, Minas Gerais, and Bahia). Each of these partners has used the CSI in ongoing projects that focus on violence prevention and child protection. The application will help to measure the impact of these projects on the real and perceived safety of children. In the U.S., the CSI will likely also be tested by CureViolence in cities like Chicago and New York.

The CSI will generate new data, analysis and visual representations of real and perceived security in violent low-income settings of Brazil and the US. It will highlight the specific experiences of up to 4,000 children in selected settings between 2014-2015. The CSI will have been scaled-up to 14 Brazilian cities by the end of 2016, with information feeding into national and global campaigns to raise awareness about violence against children.