The Rainbo Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Survivor Data Dashboard provides real-time case information drawn from service providers and law enforcement in seven districts across Sierra Leone.
No matter where gender-based violence happens, the fears of survivors are the same: Your friends and family might shun you. The police may not believe you. Will anyone bother to listen?
“For survivors all over the world, it’s not easy to talk about what they went through,” said Daniel Kettor, director of the Rainbo Initiative, a nonprofit in Sierra Leone serving survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, or SGBV. “So, people assume it’s not occurring.
But it is happening. Sierra Leone even declared the issue a national emergency in 2019. Now, a new data collaboration promises to help increase public awareness and show what the country can do to prevent it.
Produced in partnership with the Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program, the Rainbo SGBV Data Dashboard displays up-to-date case information in an interactive, user-friendly format.
The Rainbo Initiative operates nine Rainbo Centers across Sierra Leone, providing support and services for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. (Photo: The Carter Center)
Rather than waiting for annual reports, government agencies and service providers can analyze the data in real time and turn that analysis into action. It shows decision-makers where incidents are occurring, which interventions are working, and what vulnerable groups need the most help.
For example, “[the Sierra Leone] Ministry of Education approached Rainbo to find out what schools were seeing the most cases,” said Michael Baldassaro, a Carter Center data scientist who helped design the dashboard. “They wanted to know where and how it was happening. They wanted to train teachers to prevent future cases, and we have that data.”
For years, this data was underreported and inconsistent.
Service providers like Rainbo and the Sierra Leone Police Family Support Unit — the law enforcement arm dedicated to addressing domestic issues and child exploitation — recorded cases using different methods. This obscured the scale of the issue and hampered efforts to stop it.
“Sometimes survivors won’t report to the police out of fear, but they will seek support at a Rainbo Center,” Baldassaro said. And because neither had a set way to capture information, “that kind of siloed data collection makes it impossible to discuss remediation or policymaking efforts.”
To remedy this, The Carter Center worked with Rainbo and law enforcement officers to develop a common tool for case reporting, meaning the codes and terminology used on a social worker’s intake form now match those used by police.
“Though we work hand-in-glove, the data from both institutions didn’t speak the same language,” said Fatty Dabor, head of the family support unit. “I believe the harmonized tool will help in bridging the gap and strengthen the relations of both institutions going forward.”
The Carter Center and Rainbo now want to widen the network of people who “speak the same language” to include, for example, prosecutors, said Kari Mackey, an associate director in the Rule of Law program. There’s also interest in tracking cases in all of Sierra Leone’s 16 districts and not just the seven currently recorded.
“Reporting is better in urban areas, so we need to beef up data collection in rural areas,” Mackey said.
While the dashboard focuses on charts and graphs, Kettor said it plays an important storytelling role.
“It helps acknowledge the resilience of survivors,” he said. “It shows what they go through in their daily lives and makes it harder for people to ignore.”
More importantly, he added, the dashboard empowers survivors to speak up.
“The data is public, and we can receive feedback,” Kettor said. “Are we allocating enough resources and creating enough programs? Survivors can hold us accountable to that.”
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