Mobilize4Africa Campaign

According to by PCI Media Impact, the project uses traditional communications tools as well as more innovative, scalable, cost-effective, and proven entertainment-education (E-E) and social marketing methodologies. Mobilize4Africa is designed to positively change behaviours and shift social norms related to sexual violence against women and girls, and women's sexual and reproductive health rights. To achieve these objectives, PCI Media Impact is using an integrated, multi-pronged communications programme to create an informed and supportive constituency among both government/policy makers and intended audiences generally, within the capital city of Monrovia and three focus counties.

Using EE methodologies, the multi-platform campaign is working to engage audiences in dialogue, increase knowledge, and inspire attitude and behaviour change through para-social behaviour modelling. Key strategies include:

• creating and mobilising a national coalition and building their capacity to address sexual violence against women and girls;
• producing 52 episodes (two seasons of 26 episodes) of a locally produced serial radio drama, which will be broadcast nationally;
• drawing on the national radio drama, producing 156 episodes of a serial mobile drama (3-5-minute long episodes), accessible to smart and feature phones alike;
• developing interactive mobile applications, allowing listeners to interface with service providers, the radio programmes, and others about sexual violence against women issues, and allowing for innovative monitoring and evaluation strategies;
• producing 3-8 original songs addressing sexual violence against women, featuring leading Liberian, regional, and international music figures
  
  
  • For example, PCI Media Impact partnered with "Hip Co" artist Takun J (click here to learn about him on Facebook) to produce several anti-rape songs. PCI Media Impact explains that Takun J's brand of music transforms hip-hop culture, which often promotes misogynistic behaviour, by incorporating positive messaging. For example, "Song for Hawa" and "Where You At?" weave messages denouncing rape and sexual violence against women and children into what is meant to be an appealing musical format that urges listeners to stop the silence and shift norms around the epidemic levels of abuse in Liberia. (According to organisers, in a region plagued by conflict, strife, and social inequality, gender-based violence has been increasingly used as a tool to split apart families. At least 70% - and as many as 92% - of Liberian adolescent girls and women have experienced some form of sexual violence.) These songs have been shared and promoted via festivals, disc jockeys, tours, and memory chip giveaways and have received popular attention as bonus tracks to Takun J's most recent album.
    
    In addition, PCI Media Impact partnered with the THINK home (Touching Humanity In Need of Kindness) to empower survivors of gender-based sexual violence in Liberia through photography. Ranging from ages 13 to 24, the women - half of whom are already mothers and most who are at a reading level below the fourth grade - are all victims of sexual violence. After camera training and storytelling workshops, the girls each take a series of photos that explain what they believe it means to be a woman in Liberia. The presentation of these photos calls attention to the larger social issue, while the process of the project encourages individual reflection of the girls' individual stories of perseverance and hope.
    
    Takun J reportedly drew inspiration from the girls at THINK when writing his hit "Song for Hawa", and the music video (see below) stars the girls themselves, a production idea proposed by Takun J himself. PCI-Media Impact premiered Takun J's music video for "Song for Hawa" at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in March 2013. (Click here for more information about this song, as well as to read the lyrics.) Takun J has pledged his support to these ongoing efforts to raise further awareness promote initiatives to tackle violence against women. To acknowledge his social impact, Takun J was named "Anti-Rape Ambassador" at a ceremony announcing the start of an anti-rape campaign in Liberia hosted by the Ministry of Gender and Development. The campaign emphasizes the need for stronger punishment for convicted rapists, better enforcement of the country's anti-rape laws, and more prevention programmes. Takun J has been called on to use his talent and appeal to educate the public and advocate for women.

  
  

• reinforcing and contextualising the messages in the radio and mobile dramas through 208 (52 in each of 4 communities) complementary interactive radio magazine programmes, broadcast locally in local languages, which will 'turn up the volume' on the issues and generate inter-personal communication amongst intended audiences, allowing them to first consider and then validate the desired behaviour changes; and
• launching 4 community mobilization campaigns (Monrovia and 3 counties), using social marketing methods and tools, which complement the agenda and issues being promoted on the radio in each community.

The programme is intended to serve as a pilot, whereby lessons learned will contribute to an improved model, which can be implemented in challenging environments such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere.

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Violence against Women, Post-conflict

PCI Media Impact uses entertainment-education and communications for social change, designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable populations by improving knowledge, shifting locally-determined attitudes, and changing behaviours toward critical social issues. Working in a capacity-building model, through the My Community approach, the strategy of storytelling is intended to allow people to live healthier lives, sustainably, and in harmony with their natural world.