The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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Published 12 years ago
Last updated 1 year ago
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Notes from a Conversation: Organisations Using Entertainment to Address Violence against Women

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By Valentina Di Felice

When Womanity Foundation decided to expand its media work by developing an Arab-language radio drama to promote women's rights, we decided to share our plan with Amy Bank of Puntos de Encuentro, as she had many years of experience using serial drama for social change. We asked Amy to share insights that could help us as we ventured into a new field for us. Her advice was extremely helpful, in particular the points summarized below, and we are putting them into practice. In addition, we are currently in discussions to coordinate more formally with the Pop Culture with a Purpose project. What started as a two-hour conversation has grown to a much larger mutual collaboration!

Points from our conversation with Amy that we have taken on board:

  • Don't have the radio drama be a stand-alone activity. Link a series of outreach strategies and activities to the drama (e.g., talk shows, leaflets to distribute, magazines, public events, listening groups) - each reinforcing and adding information to the overall message.
  • Consider the drama more a commercial media product than an "educational" one. It should attract listeners because of its entertainment value. Therefore, it needs to be appealing to the identified audience and not be either too didactic or generic. We also need to identify the right time slot, as well as allow for re-runs in complementary time slots.
  • Build the programme step by step, starting out with a few pilot episodes and then a first season. For each step, do focus group-type consults with listening groups in our target audience to adjust the programme offerings and to learn from the past.
  • For evaluation models, reach out to organisations working in radio drama to request a copy of their evaluation report(s), as well as methodologies and indicators they have used. They can provide useful insights, even if we're only able to carry out a small-scale study.
  • In general, continue talking with others about what we're doing, in order to get feedback on our initial thoughts and possibly revise some of the programme parts. This kind of feedback loop can also build confidence with regards to implementation and to potential impact.