1. SUMMARY
Deployed in Burundi for over a year now, the Ideas Box is facing real success. Use and community interest for the device are continuously on the rise.
The mid-term impact report published in the summer of 2014 highlighted early trends after six months of observation. One of the main recommandations of this study was the organisation of a psychosocial assessment of the Ideas Box on Congolese populations living in refugee camps in Burundi.
This is the purpose of the present assessment conducted by the psychiatrist Christian Lachal, a mental health and posttraumatic stress disorders expert in humanitarian contexts. Based on more than a hundred individual and group interviews, as well as Ideas Box user attendance figures, this assessment provides evidence of significant impacts of the Ideas Box on at least three aspects:
» Support for post-traumatic stress disorder
» Strengthening peace and reducing community tensions
» Information security and risk prevention from rumors and misinformation