Islands are the bell-weathers of international environmental policy.
The world will see their success, or failure, first.
James A. Michel, President, Seychelles

February 2010 - The Eastern Caribbean is at the front line of adapting to climate change. Small islands are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, protected areas, economies, tourism and the communities that live there.

While global attention has been brought to bear on this issue, there remains a critical communications 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.

While the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) programme of work on Protected Areas' (PoWPA) Article 3.5 calls for an ambitious public awareness and behavior change program, this is arguably one of the aspects of the important CBD agenda that requires greatest implementation support globally. The resilience of the ecosystem, as well as the communities that live within them, can only be accomplished with a well informed, committed and engaged public.

Launched in January 2010, My Island – My Community is an ambitious new partnership program committed to building public awareness across the Eastern Caribbean to encourage wide spread behavior change with regard to small island community preparedness and adaptation to climate change. It brings together a unique network of organizations committed to using the power of communications to enhance knowledge sharing, engage the public and directly support CBA activities (Community Based Adaption) across the 9 countries of the Eastern Caribbean.

My Island – My Community will use a multi-pronged communications approach to motivate social change. Working on one level of community change will likely fail at producing the widespread and lasting changes needed to respond to climate change. To generate effective and sustainable behavior change, this communications strategy will target multiple “levels” – the individual, peer group, community and national, as well as the overall policy, legislative and economic enabling environment.

My Island – My Community will build on a regional radio serial drama to weave together relevant information on climate change with a compelling story. Coalitions comprised of national partners, including local environmental CBOs/NGOs, radio stations and/or scientists, in each of the 9 countries will complement the radio drama through multi-tiered public awareness activities, including: interactive call-in shows, capacity development for journalists, and Community Action Campaigns. A Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) will bring the best of science to this comprehensive awareness strategy. With action on the ground in 9 countries, regional sharing will allow for unique peer-to-peer learning opportunities; regional advocacy; and significant “economies-of-scale” in implementation.

Get Involved!
To apply to participate in the program, download the application materials below:
Invitation Letter
Application Form
Program Summary

The coalition leader must submit by before March 12, 2010.

Building upon over 200 episodes of the radio drama, the program seeks to:

• Increase appreciation of the region’s natural resources, including how resource conservation and species preservation can reduce poverty and ensure sustainable development;
• Increase awareness of links between climate change, population pressures and environmental degradation;
• Increase willingness of individuals to take action on matters related to biodiversity conservation, climate change adaption and sustainable land management; and,
• Increase community action and number of organizations supporting mitigation and implementing projects for mitigation and adaption to climate change.

TO GET INVOLVED, Please contact:  
Alleyne Regis, Program Manager, Caribbean
Media Impact
St. Lucia
Tel. 758 452 0864
aregis@mediaimpact.org

Through 25 years of experience working with local partners around the globe, Media Impact has developed the My Community approach as an effective, transformational, rigorous and community-driven Communications for Change methodology. Utilizing the My Community approach, the Eastern Caribbean initiative will focus on eveloping the capacity of local coalitions to produce communication and media campaigns using its Entertainment-Education and Community Action methodologies. The partnership program will utilize Media Impact’s My Community approach to create a comprehensive regional communications initiative.

My Island – My Community is a partnership of Media Impact, the Secretariat of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States(OECS) , The Nature Conservancy (TNC), GEF Small Grants Programme, implemented by UNDP (GEF SGP), Global Island Partnership (GLISPA), the Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), BirdLife International, Durrell, SeaWeb,the St Lucia Folk Research Center, USAID, and Panos Institute Caribbean. We are actively seeking further partners.

SOAP IN THE CARIBBEAN SEA

In the late 1990’s, the island of Saint Lucia tuned in for the radio drama Apwe Plezi, a local production and broadcast that lasted for 2 years promoting family planning. Media Impact and Rare coordinated this initiative that resulted in increases in knowledge, attitude and behavior. Listeners to the radio drama were more likely to trust family planning workers 83%, compared to 72% of non-listeners. The proportions of respondents who considered it acceptable for husbands to have sex partners outside their marriage declined from 27% in the pretest to 14% in the posttest surveys. The success of Apwe Plezi led the neighboring islands of St. Vincent, Grenada, Dominica and Antigua to request a similar program. This request was honored, and saw the production and broadcast of 104 episodes of Coconut Bay. This island-based drama, produced on the island of Grenada, was one of the top-rated programs in the OECS region. These programs addressed a variety of social issues and biodiversity conservation in the Eastern Caribbean.

Through 25 years of experience with communications strategies, Media Impact has demonstrated the power of radio dramas as critical elements in the social change strategies as:

• They provide positive role models for audiences to take action;
• Through a fictional story, reality can be represented in less confrontational manner;
• Dramas appeals to emotions thus facilitating learning; Dramas allow for complex and integrated messages that encompass health, environment, social pressures, and other dimensions of real life.
• Dramas, which benefit from extensive formative, process and summary research, provoke interpersonal communication;
• People will talk with their families and friends about the plot, facilitating knowledge;
• They help to establish social norms; and,
• Reinforce self-efficacy, the belief that people have the capacity to change their own lives.

Using serial dramas, the audience is allowed time to form bonds with characters whose thinking and behavior regarding various environmental and climate change issues positively and gradually evolves during the course of the storyline. Entertainment education programs forge emotional ties to audience members that influence values and behaviors more forcefully than the purely cognitive information provided in documentaries. Next to peer and parental role models, role models from the mass media are of particular importance in shaping cultural attitudes and behavior.

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