Anchoring Awareness in the Community - Handicap International

VARIED VISUAL COMMUNICATION TOOLS
For extending awareness, numerous IEC
(Information Education Communication)
communication tools were developed. Their
elaboration was based on the analysis of IEC
tools already existing in this area.
First, tools were created to “be seen”:
T-shirts for the team, animators and those
who distributed Stickers were designed and
widely distributed and stuck on cars and
public transportation vehicles in group areas
and administrations. In addition, to inform
by leaving material with the inhabitants,
brochures and leaflets were designed in
different local languages and distributed.
Based on a preliminary study, radio also proved
to be a very pertinent media. Thus, a series of
40 radio programs in the Somali language
were produced and broadcast on local radio
as a complement to the visual tools.
Other long-term elements were created at
some intervention sites, such as information
boards and painted walls in Ethiopia and in
Somaliland.
Finally, audiovisual tools rounded out the
variety of communication tools, with the
elaboration of an HIV/AIDS prevention film in
Somaliland, the video clip of a song promoting
voluntary counseling and testing in Ethiopia
and a film presenting the project.
Use existing tools
that have shown their worth
Before developing its own tools, the HI team
met with other NGOs working on AIDS and
collected their communication tools to
use as a base. These tools were a source of
inspiration for enriching discussions on the
choice of awareness messages and the way of
presenting them.
Other types of tools were inspired by tools that
had shown their worth in other situations.
Thus, the idea of producing a song with a
video clip was inspired from an idea used
in Ghana. In Ethiopia, this type of tool was
proposed by local artists, who created a song
and an associated clip in a typically Ethiopian
version, with lyrics promoting testing.
Communicate where others
are not already present
A preliminary study showed that in the Somali
region (Ethiopia), numerous IEC tools, which
had been developed on HIV/AIDS, mainly
brochures and leaflets, had little impact. This
was primarily due to the fact that they were
almost all written in Amharic in a region where
people speak mainly Somali! This gave rise to
the idea of producing brochures in Amharic, as
well as Somali, and leaflets in both languages.
In a similar way, in Ethiopia many radio
programs on AIDS had been developed in
Amharic. None were in Somali. For this reason,
40 radio broadcasts were produced in this
language.
Choose media adapted to lifestyle
Knowledge of the context obtained from
preliminary studies on existing tools and
practices enabled identifying that the main
means of information was the radio in
regions where few adults are literate and
where television is rare. It was thus decided
to communicate on HIV/AIDS through a series
© Julie de Lamarzelle pour Handicap International
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