My Island-My Community

My Island - My Community uses a multi-pronged communication approach to stimulate social change - working at multiple "levels": the individual, peer group, community, national, and overall policy, legislative, and economic enabling environment.

The regional radio serial drama Callaloo, part of My Island - My Community, weaves together relevant information on climate change and health with what is intended to be a compelling story. Twice a week for the next two years, more than 200 total episodes will be combined with radio magazines and call-in shows - all designed to emphasise the role of biological diversity and health in promoting sustainable development. My Island-My Community intends to inform residents on how they can get involved and help, how they can support efforts to combat natural disasters, and how increasing population size continues to threaten this fragile region.

Using the My Community approach to communications for social change, the initiative works to develop the capacity of local coalitions to produce communication and media campaigns using PCI-Media Impact's entertainment-education and community action methodologies. Coalitions comprised of national partners - including local environmental community-based organisations (CBOs)/non-governmental organisations (NGOs), radio stations, and/or scientists - in each of the 15 countries are complementing the radio drama through multi-tiered public awareness activities, including: interactive call-in shows, capacity development for journalists, and community action campaigns. With action on the ground in 15 countries, regional sharing will allow for peer-to-peer learning opportunities, regional advocacy, and "economies-of-scale" in implementation.

Environment, Climate Change, Health.

According to organisers, small islands are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, protected areas, economies, tourism and communities. While global attention has been brought to bear on this issue, there remains a critical communication challenge: how to effectively engage the public, ensuring they have access to sound and timely information and a clear vision of what they can do to help mitigate the challenges posed by climate change.

PCI-Media Impact is an independent, non-profit organisation founded in 1985 that is dedicated to empowering communities worldwide to inspire enduring change through storytelling. Throughout its 25 years of experience, PCI-Media Impact has found that radio dramas are critical elements in the social change strategies - particularly if they are based on extensive formative, process, and impact research - because they:

• provide positive role models that inspire action;
• use a fictional story to represent reality in a less confrontational manner;
• appeal to emotions, thus facilitating learning;
• disseminate complex and integrated messages that encompass health, environment, social pressures, and other dimensions of real life;
• stimulate people to talk with their families and friends about the plot, thereby facilitating knowledge;
• help establish social norms; and
• reinforce self-efficacy: the belief that people have the capacity to change their own lives.

PCI-Media Impact explains that serial dramas allow the audience time to form bonds with characters, whose thinking and behaviour regarding various issues positively and gradually evolve during the course of the storyline. The characters model behaviours that listeners then adopt. Entertainment-education programmes are meant to foster the forging of emotional ties to audience members that influence values and behaviours more forcefully than the purely cognitive information provided in documentaries.