KINGSTON, Jamaica —The Child Abuse Reporting System (CARS), a smartphone application (App) that allows for the reporting of child abuse to the Office of The Children’s Registry (OCR), has been selected by Research In Motion (RIM) and is currently being featured in its BlackBerry App World.

RIM, the makers of BlackBerry smartphones, has featured the app on its ‘Carousel’, where the company features innovative, high-ranked applications across the world.

CARS has attained several accomplishments. Designed and developed by Samuel Folkes of Aranis Technologies, the App is the second of its kind in the world and the first in the region. It is also the first application of its kind to be approved by Research In Motion for listing in BlackBerry App World.

Advocacy group Help JA Children led the development process for the application, which provides another avenue for reporting to the OCR’s report@ocr.gov.jm email address which is one of the five ways in which reports are submitted to the Registry. Otherwise, reports of child abuse are received via call, fax, mail or visit to the OCR’s office located at 12 Carlton Crescent, Kingston 10.

The groups’ chief advocate Brandon Allwood said that the application’s recognition by RIM is important as the group seeks to get more people to download CARS. “This is a great milestone for us. For RIM to contact us and feature the app is something that is big, especially considering the thousands of applications that are added to BlackBerry App World each week,” Allwood said.