Radio – C4D Network

Redesigning an education project for child friendly radio: a multisectoral collaboration to promote children’s health, education, and human rights after a humanitarian crisis in Sierra Leone (BMJ 2018; 363 :k4667)

February 11, 2019

In this paper the authors describe how an educational project was rapidly adapted into a radio education programme after the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone.

In May 2014, Sierra Leone reported its first case of Ebola in Kailahun, a remote, marginalised, and impoverished district bordering Liberia. The district had one of the highest concentrations of Ebola infections during this outbreak. After this, over 1600 children were orphaned and gender inequalities were exacerbated . Public health control measures put in place by the government of Sierra Leone included closing all schools and prohibiting public congregation.

The educational programme “Getting Ready for School”, funded by the UK charity Comic Relief, had been operating since its launch in 2011 within 21 schools in Kailahun. While many other educational services stopped entirely in Kailahun, the Getting Ready for School programme was redesigned as a radio education programme called Pikin to Pikin Tok (PtPT), meaning Child to Child Talk, in Krio. The lead consortium partner was Child to Child, a UK based international child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) (www.childtochild.org.uk), and the lead implementing partner was Pikin-To-Pikin (www.pikintopikin.org), a local NGO. The goals and objectives of the project changed in response to the circumstances in Sierra Leone; this required a substantially different approach by the redesigned scheme than in the original project. The entire effort, from starting the school project to the end of the radio project, ran from 2011 to 2016.

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How Is Radio Helping to Improve Girls’ Education in South Sudan (BBC Media Action Research, 2017)

February 11, 2019

South Sudan, the newest country in the world, has some of the lowest educational indicators globally. Girls particularly struggle to achieve educational milestones, with very few of those who complete primary school continuing onto secondary education. In 2016, 128,000 girls started primary education, but only 2,700 completed secondary.

The project: The Girls Education South Sudan (GESS) project – funded by the UK’s Department for International Development – aims to change this, so that all girls can go to, stay in, and achieve at school. A consortium-based five-year-long initiative (2013-2018) of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan, GESS aims to transform the lives of a generation of children in the country – especially girls – through education.

Midline research found that listeners of the radio programme Our School – which seeks to raise awareness of the benefits of education and tackle associated barriers – had more knowledge of South Sudan’s education system, had been more involved in education, and had budgeted for and discussed education with girls or daughters more than non-listeners.

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How communications can change social norms around adolescent girls (ODI study, 2016)

October 11, 2018

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.

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The Effectiveness of a Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Strategy in Changing Social Attitudes on Equal Rights to Property for Women – The Case of Kosovo (USAID Conference Paper, 2018)

April 20, 2018

Society in Kosovo is considered patriarchal and patrilineal, where property inheritance is traditionally transferred to men (Joireman, 2015). Even though the laws on Gender Equality and Law on Inheritance are considered egalitarian, the social norms continue to encourage patriarchal values that exclude women from property inheritance.

This paper addresses the social context and norms related to property inheritance. It discusses how it has negatively affected women’s ability to inherit and own property, and describes interventions implemented under the USAID-funded Property Rights Program (PRP), namely a multi-channel Social and Behavior Change Communications (SBCC) campaign, with the aim of countering these negative effects. The application of an SBCC methodology to encourage change in beliefs, attitudes and behavior on women freely exercising their property rights in practice is the focus of this paper.

This paper was presented at the Annual World Bank Land and Poverty Conference.