About Augeo
About Augeo
Augeo’s vision, mission and approachAugeo Foundation is a private initiative, established in 2006. In Latin, ‘Augeo’ means to strengthen, promote and flourish. Augeo aims to contribute to the realisation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It envisions a world in which the rights, safety and dignity of children, their parents and communities are respected. We invest in approaches that combat violence against children, with a specific focus on violence in the home and family.
Child abuse and neglect (which includes children as victims and witnesses of domestic violence) has long term consequences for the individual child, the family and society. The social implications and costs are enormous. Governments are primarily responsible to provide a safe environment for children but cannot work on their own.
Augeo, being a private initiative, partners with public institutions and civil society organizations in its capacity as a social enterprise. This means that Augeo uses business principles and strategies to invest capital, expertise and energy in approaches that combat violence against children. Besides striving for a financial return to recover parts of our project costs, we focus on a social return on investment.
Traditionally, Augeo has focused its work on children in the Netherlands. The foundation has now reached a stage where it would like to share its experiences, practices and successful initiatives across borders.
Augeo’s achievements and ambitions
Identification
Since its inception, Augeo has focused on strengthening the capacities of professionals working with children and their families to signal and communicate on child abuse and neglect. It has successfully established a social business called The Next Page, which is an innovative e-learning platform on child abuse and neglect.
The Next Page uses interactive e-learning methodologies and simulated practical case studies illustrated by film clippings which makes e-learning highly effective and efficient. The e-modules on offer cover the various steps of identifying and acting on child abuse and neglect.
Each module is specifically tailored to the needs of the profession, such as Medical General Practitioners, Hospital Emergency Room staff, Pediatric staff or Child Care professionals in the Education sector.
Published academic studies have demonstrated the impact of The Next Page, especially amongst medical professions. In the Netherlands, currently 80% of the hospitals are using the e-learning modules and 40% of the Medical General Practitioners have committed themselves to get accredited by The Next Page in 2012. These results are highly encouraging and have been supported by a public-private partnership between Augeo and the Ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sport under the 2007-2010 government.
Considering its positive impact on Dutch society, The Next Page is now being introduced as a social business in other countries. Augeo is interested in developing cross sector partnerships to successfully take this international step.
Prevention & treatment
Augeo’s ambitions for the future focus on the prevention and treatment phases of child abuse and neglect. Below are some examples of our current work:
• Augeo has called for more awareness amongst new parents about the Shaken Baby Syndrome by advocating more systematic information provision by mid wives. This was part of Augeo´s general child advocacy work in the Netherlands;
• In partnership with the Hogeschool Leiden, Augeo has set up a lectureship on Parenting with the aim to build knowledge and teach on issues of parenting and methodologies for parental guidance. Augeo is keen to work with new positive parenting initiatives;
• Augeo publishes a quarterly magazine on Child Abuse which focuses on implementers and policy makers in the area of child abuse. In 2012, the magazine will be published online as part of a digital platform on Domestic Violence;
• Augeo and partners are developing innovative e-tools for (abused) children and parents - this is still in an exploratory phase.
How we work
Augeo works with local and international partners to achieve our vision, mission and goals. We believe that sustainable solutions to stop all violence against children can be generated through a combination of:
• active involvement of professionals working in the social sector;
• strategic public-private partnerships; and
• innovative projects and products using business principles.
Augeo…
1. Makes an analysis of existing bottlenecks while building on good practices. Questions we may ask are: ‘which responsibilities to combat child abuse are not (yet) taken by the government?’’ Which initiatives stimulating Positive Parenting can be strengthened?’
2. Creates tailor-made networks. We bring together organisations and individual experts in networks to contribute a (sub) solution to the identified bottlenecks. The constitution of the networks vary according to the need and theme at hand and can evolve into strategic partnerships. They are inter-disciplinary in nature and open to actors across sectors.
3. Adds value to innovative projects. Depending on the need, Augeo can strengthen existing initiatives or start new innovative projects. We bring in a diversity of resources, from human to technical to financial. We also implement projects directly in partnership with others. The project goals can vary from knowledge transfer to methodological or effect research.
4. Engages in cross sector partnerships. Augeo has experience with working in public-private partnerships. It signs partnership agreements with all its project partners based on principles of Relational Equity, Transparency and Mutual Benefit. This means that the agreements have reciprocal commitments: partners that receive financial support may offer their technical resources to other projects within Augeo’s portfolio. Diverse knowledge, experience and products subsequently benefit various partners and projects.
5. Influences decision makers. Our independent position allows us to take up a unique position to influence government departments active in the area of Children’s Rights in a results based manner. Augeo is part of the Children’s Rights Collective in the Netherlands and aims to play an active role in the international community on Violence Against Children.