From Feb. 1-4, with Mission Driven Alumni Funding from ECA’s Alumni Affairs Office, U.S. Embassy Cotonou hosted 35youth from Benin and 15 from Niger for a TechCamp to create a movement using the power of technology to galvanize youth involvement during the upcoming elections in each country.
Mission utilized YALI Alumni from five different countries to inspire and educate the participants on available open source platforms that have been used for elections throughout Africa. In four days the participants created the “Jeune, Implique Toi” (Youth, Get Involved!) campaign including: a web based platform for citizen journalism, mobile application for reporting incidents at polling places, YouTube campaign and a complete communication plan.
U.S. Embassy Cotonou’s social media sites saw a 300 percent jump in engagement and record numbers of new members added during and directly after the week. #TechCampCotonou, #vote229 and @USEmbassyCotonou, the three most common hashtags used during the camp, continue to be among the top five trends in Benin social media.
