Global community of professionals working in Communication for Development
By C4D Network
Communication for Development (C4D) promising practices are dialogue-driven interventions that lead to the sustainable improvement of living conditions for children and their families, particularly the most vulnerable. This booklet brings together four outstanding examples from Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Viet Nam, where UNICEF-supported interventions by governments and civil society organizations are bringing about positive change.
Click here for full booklet.
By C4D Network
Adolescent girls in Kenya face a number of risks and vulnerabilities that can affect their health, education status, and general well-being. The Adolescent Girls Initiative-Kenya (AGI-K) is currently delivering multi-sectoral interventions, targeting violence prevention, education, health, and wealth creation to adolescent girls aged 11 to 15 in two marginalized areas of Kenya.
This learning brief is one of three, prepared during the implementation phase of the project, focusing on key areas of best practices and lessons learn. These briefs aim to share learning with specialists and civil society networks, and help inform future design and management of adolescent girls’ programmes in hard-to-reach, marginalized communities.
Community conversations are a socially transformative approach that galvanizes communities to address the underlying causes of underdevelopment and vulnerability. The approach provides a platform where a cross section of the community members including local administrators, religious leaders, parents, teachers, community health workers, young men and women, converge and reflect on the challenges faced by the girls. They further identify steps to take to resolve these challenges and draw action plans that will eventually lead to a change in attitude, values, beliefs and practices that impede adolescent girls from realizing their full potential or well-being.
Click here for full brief.
By C4D Network
A multi-year, multi-country study has been exploring the complex ways in which adolescent girls’ capabilities are shaped and/or constrained by gender-discriminatory social norms, attitudes and practices, and under what conditions positive changes may be brought about, particularly around norms and practices related to child marriage and education.
Evidence from this report showed that communications programmes could be an effective way of challenging gender-discriminatory attitudes and practices, reaching a variety of stakeholders with both broad pro-gender equality messages and messages on specific discriminatory norms. While no one approach was found to be more effective than others, programmes with more than one communications component and those integrated with activities other than communications were found to achieve a higher proportion of positive outcomes.
The study has been conducted by ODI in partnership with national research teams in Viet Nam, Nepal, Ethiopia and Uganda, commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as part of a flagship programme on Transforming the Lives of Girls and Young Women.
Click here for full study.
By C4D Network
Abstract: The entertainment–education (E-E) strategy in development communication has been widely described as the panacea to development challenges in Africa. However, despite its growing application on the continent, E-E is still argued to be inhibited from contributing meaningfully toward development efforts. E-E interventions are argued to be hamstrung by their failure to embrace theoretical advances in development communication and E-E scholarship and for remaining rooted in the modernization paradigm. Using the social change paradigm as its framework, this article assesses the notions of development, change, communication, audiences, and education that underpin the conceptualization and design of Tsha Tsha, an E-E television drama that uses a novel cultural approach to address issues surrounding HIV and AIDS in South Africa. The data informing the study were gathered through a Focused Synthesis Approach and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study’s findings show that significant efforts have been made by Tsha Tsha’s producers to bridge E-E practice and contemporary development communication and E-E scholarship. The data analyzed in the study show that Tsha Tsha’s notions of development, change, education, communication, and audience have been significantly remoored in line with the core tenets of the E-E for Social Change paradigm. The implications of the study are that more engagement and synergies need to be cultivated between E-E practitioners and development communication and E-E scholars if E-E’s full potential, in contributing to development challenges on the continent, is to be realized.
Click here for full paper.
By C4D Network
In April 2018, almost 1,200 people gathered in Indonesia for the Summit on Behaviour and Social Change Communication. Practitioners, researchers, donors, and leaders from more than 400 organisations travelled to Nusa Dua from the Asia Pacific region, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. This issue features ten papers prepared by Summit participants based on their presentations. They cover a range of challenges from using story-telling to help fishermen in Belize deal with threats to their occupations, and influencing adolescent girls and boys in India to address gender discrimination and stereotyping – to the use of social media to change norms regarding babies’ health in Malawi.
Click here for full journal.