#ScanTheScar campaign highlights plight of child and teen pregnancies in SA

In 2022, more than 105,000 South African girls aged 10 to 19 gave birth. For Amnesty International SA, the increasing number of child and teen pregnancies in the country is a “crisis that cannot be ignored”.

To this end, in partnership with award-winning advertising agency Joe Public, it launched the #ScanTheScar campaign.

The campaign included print ads in Woman & Home and Bona magazines, encouraging readers to “scan the scar”: an image of a caesarean scar on a young girl's stomach embedded with a Spotify code.

Once scanned, the code directs readers to a Spotify playlist featuring poems based on the real stories of three girls who'd endured child and teenage pregnancies, collected with the assistance of NGOs Children of Success and Women & Men Against Child Abuse.

These poems, crafted and narrated by well-known female poets and artists Lebo Mashile, Koleka Putuma and Thembe Mvula, were set to original tracks of music.

At the end of each piece, a call to action directed listeners to visit the Amnesty International SA website, where they could take action by sending a pre-populated email to President Cyril Ramaphosa demanding action over this issue.

“Listening to these stories [told] in a poetic way gives you a real feeling of what these young girls have actually been through,” says Genevieve Quintal, media and communications officer of Amnesty International SA.

“The numbers of young girls giving birth are staggering but we need to remember that these are not just numbers, but real people and our #ScanTheScar campaign gives a voice to these individuals,” says Shenilla Mohamed, executive director of Amnesty International SA.

“It is important for us to continue highlighting the crisis we face so that there can be change. This issue needs to be tackled by the government and the people of SA together, however, the state has a responsibility to create an enabling environment for the youth to make autonomous and informed decisions, to support these young and adolescent girls to continue their education so that they do not fall through the cracks.” 

Martin Schlumpf, executive creative director of Joe Public, says: “As advertisers, we have a huge responsibility to highlight issues like child and teenage pregnancy, and work with organisations such as Amnesty International SA to spark important conversations.”

This article was sponsored by Joe Public.