Adolescent Girls Creating Safer Cities: Harnessing the Potential of Communication for Development (C4D)

"UN-Habitat, Plan International, Women in Cities International and other partners such as the Huairou Commission are increasingly integrating C4D in participatory planning processes involving local communities and local government bodies. The results include greater local ownership, broader multi-stakeholder dialogues, and the encouragement of urban communities to engage actively in local decision-making processes."

According to this report, over 1 million people, among them many adolescent girls, are moving from rural areas to urban slums each week. This report looks at how communication for development (C4D) gives girls a voice with which they can take an active role in the development of safe urban environments. C4D has a "strong focus on dialogue, community participation and ownership, this evolving field leverages modern and established communication technologies, and their underlying principles, to help create a level playing field for everyone in terms of accessing all of a country's social benefits."

There are many strategies suggested here that could improve the newly emerged "right to the city" concept for adolescent girls and others. Those rights include "liberty and freedom to benefit from city life, transparency, equity and efficiency in city administrations, participation and respect in local democratic decision-making, recognition of diversity in economic, social and cultural life, and reduced poverty, social exclusion and urban violence."

Participatory urban planning would engage local people, including girls, in the planning and design of their neighbourhoods. Thus far, adolescent girls have largely been excluded from these efforts, but C4D can "provide the means for engaging with adolescent girls in creating safer streets and better-planned spaces."

International collaboration on safe cities for girls could also be enhanced by C4D as it helps "promote urban inclusion and democratic governance of cities."

C4D specifically brings advocacy, social mobilisation, and behaviour change to the issue of changing how cities are shaped so that they are safer and more inclusive of girls.

Advocacy combined with information and communication "are the building blocks of crime and violence prevention strategies." Advocacy empowers internal and external stakeholders to participate, and communication about the current safety situation and the needs and desire of the community members are important elements for them to take action on behalf of their safety and well-being. In Bogotá, Colombia, a campaign used face-to-face communication and arts-based communication along with songs, posters, stickers, and petitioning to bring messages that reinforced each other and reached areas that other channels could not. In this type of strategy, materials can be created with local people to embrace and respect local language, dialect, and realities.

Social mobilisation can be a tool for "addressing the causes of crime and developing a culture of prevention..." In Kenya, Mozambique, and Cameroon, a three-country initiative uses "face-to-face meetings followed up with digital and paper mapping to identify gender and violence issues in various different locations…the project’s use of arts and citizen journalism added a visual communications element." In the first year, more girls became involved in community decision-making, district planning, and budgeting processes and inspired additional youth groups to start their own campaigns.

Behavioural change "requires identifying undesirable behaviours and ways to change them. Facilitating partnerships and exchanges between boys and girls…has proven to be a constructive way to help change mindsets and behaviours." Tools include media campaigns, sensitivity training, street theatre, education and communication materials, global advocacy media, and youth structures. A campaign in Delhi, India, used magazines and posters posted all over the neighbourhood to as a visual presence of the project’s message. This was reinforced through theatre, dance, and movement in areas with high levels of illiteracy. Performances dramatised sensitive issues that people didn’t want to discuss, such as child marriage, drug abuse, rape,  and spousal abuse. Broadcast media (video and radio) supported the other genres and trained women and girls both in technical skills and how to identify local issues of concern and interview local residents.

The pros and cons of C4D:

• Face-to-face communication: highly interactive; limited in scope and not ideal for exposing sensitive issues.
• Broadcast media: reaches large audiences where there is electricity, both general and specialised; expensive; difficult to adapt to specific cultures and languages; can be censored by governments or media outlets.
• Print media: low to medium cost for literate audience; can explain complex issues; cannot be changed once printed; not useful in areas with low levels of literacy.
• Internet and cell phones: highly interactive, but costly and of limited availability in some areas. global in outreach; can convey simple and complex messages; communication across international boundaries may be difficult.

Challenges for C4D:

• C4D is not always widely understood by United Nations agencies, international organisations, government, non-governmental organisations, communities, or adolescent girls themselves. There is a lack of support, too, for communication that engages adolescent girls.
• C4D approaches can put the issues of adolescent girls on the political agenda, but practitioners need to consider family, community, and city so that "adolescent girls do not bear the burden of creating change alone."