iPods, singing contests and Frisbees – new ways to communicate

If you live in a disaster-vulnerable community, what is the best way for you to learn how to improve your resilience? How might you effectively share what you learn with other communities?

The options for getting good information into practice go well beyond passing out pamphlets or holding community lectures, participants in a BRACED online discussion said this week. From community theatre to radio soap operas, and from text messages to games and competitions, innovative ideas for making information engaging – and making it stick – abound.

Lucia Scodanibbio, of the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) programme, said projects she has worked with have had success holding youth song-writing competitions, aimed at coming up with catchy and memorable messages.

The entries, she said, were streamed on local radio and put on a Facebook page where people could vote on their favourites, with the winners performed at a town concert.

“People liked it a lot and it brought the town together around the topic” - in this case the importance of protecting mangroves, she said.

Margot Steenbergen, of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said in her organisation’s experience, “simple mnemonics and memory aids like songs and rhymes work really well for (communicating) simple information.”

Songs are part of an effort to promote hand-washing in Ghana, for instance, she said, and “when we came back to one of the schools, it was great to see they were all singing one of our little songs… and had even translated it to their own dialect.”

Games can be similarly useful as a way to simply communicate ideas, and get people to engage with them, participants said.

Pablo Suarez of the Climate Centre, for instance, talks to disaster risk responders about the dangers of extreme weather by throwing a Frisbee into the audience, which they can catch with ease. “That’s the kind of storm you’re used to dealing with,” he says.

Then he launches an oversize soft Frisbee into the group, which wobbles and crashes into the crowd. “That’s the kind of storm that’s coming. Could you catch it?” he says. People immediately grasp the problem.

“You almost literally see a big “Aha!” happening” as people “see the weather”, Steenbergen said.

Her organisation has a range of easy-to-use games available, she said.

Community theatre and community radio – including soap-opera-style series – also can work well to pass on messages, if they’re in local languages people understand, and use local people as experts or actors, participants in the discussion said.

“The right language is really important,” said Julius Kamau of INTASAVE.

Reaching out to local influencers – such as imams or pastors – or people who regularly spend time in conversation with others – such as hairdressers or tea ladies – is another good way to get information circulating, participants said.

But higher tech methods also can play a key role, particularly when paired with face-to-face interactions.

One project has handed out iPods, pre-loaded with videos and audio, to community members, particularly women, so they can listen when they have time amid their household chores. And text messages sent to mobile phones can work well in an age when most people are rarely without them.

Some participants asked about ways to engage communities on gender issues. Bettina Koelle of the Climate Centre pointed out that simple measures, like putting on an event for children at the same time as one aimed at women or adults, can help make sure women are there and focused on what needs to be learned.

“We found often that offering a workshop for children in parallel will allow women to participate in the actual workshop more actively,” she said.

What other ideas might you consider to engage communities? Some additional suggestions from our discussion include:

- Participatory community video

- Mobile cinema, with a discussion afterward

- Murals

- Creating a mascot for a project or message

- Comedians

- “Engagement” games that go on for a few weeks and allow people to earn points with real-life actions