#MakeGirlsVoicesCount - A Digital Action Campaign by Girls Voices Initiative
Listen to Sikemi's story here
The digital action campaign, 'Make Girls Voices Count', sought to transform girls’ perception of themselves and their stories by amplifying their voices using radio and social media and providing the skills to empower them. And mobilizing community action towards girls’ empowerment through radio call-ins and social media engagement.
The activities opened with basic rights education for community schoolgirls (including an orphanage school) and the girls has capacity building sessions on storytelling and sharing their stories in safe spaces to inspire social change. And after the sessions, the audio stories of the girls were collected in private audio recordings where the girls felt safe to tell their stories and their identities were protected since they provided pseudonyms or nicknames in the audio recording.
The Campaign was designed to run on the radio for 3 months and mobilize community action towards girls' empowerment. Radios are everywhere, with at least 75% of households in developing countries having access to a radio1. Therefore, radio presented the strongest reach to a wide audience. And we targeted to air our digital action campaign on the radio frequency with the widest reach, the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) on 92.9 Kapital FM.
The 'Make Girls Voices Count' Campaign shared girls’ stories over a radio series program. The episodes would feature 3 segments:
- An audio playback of a girls' story. The girls’ stories were recorded before the show and played back to kick-start the discussions of the day.
- A brief discussion of the subject matter of the girls' story had listeners, and our partners from the World Pulse community join in as guest speakers in the studio to lead the discussion on the specific issue in the story of the episode.
- A call-in session to take questions and comments from listeners. The session received the listeners’ reactions to the story shared and the discussion by the guest speakers.
Finally, the program ended with the call-to-action and shared other relevant information to the listeners. The campaign also featured live tweets, #MakeGirlsVoicesCount, and shared strong quotes and highlights of the discussions and action steps. In addition to the radio series, the girls' stories were to be adapted into comic-book-style animations that would make for an engaging story series shared across our social media platforms.
The digital action campaign sought to spotlight girls' voices on various issues affecting them such as, early or forced marriage, early childbirth, lack of education, child labour or abuse, gender-based violence and other issues affecting them. The campaign sought to teach adolescent girls to use their voices to influence their lives and their communities. And inspired social change in people's perceptions and behavioural attitudes towards girls. The Digital Action Campaign, Make Girls Voices Count, sought to promote gender equality in our community by amplifying the voices of girls and explored various digital media platforms, including radio and social media, to mobilize community action towards girls' empowerment.
The audience for the Digital Action Campaign comprised the public who were targeted from the listenership profile of the radio station where the campaign was aired, as well as millions of users of various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and other digital platforms and websites. The specific ask of the Digital Action Campaign required our audience to:
Share girls' stories - Girls' stories abound around us and we need to share those stories so that they inspire other girls to speak out and kick-start social change in the perceptions and behavioural attitudes of people towards girls and women in our communities.
Share the resources - Girls Voices Initiative offers various skills programs for girls. Also, it's networks include relevant development initiatives and partners who provide advanced solutions for girls such as legal aid and other advanced support. The audience were informed about how to connect these resources to the girls who desperately need them.
The campaign inspired people to champion girls' voices and equipped people with knowledge of resources that exist to benefit girls that need them. We encouraged individuals to be aware and sensitive to girls' realities. And each individual listener was challenged to simply start where they are by taking 2 actions: share girls' stories with us and share our available resources with the girls who need them.