Future in Our Hands Community Sensitisation Project

The community sensitisation took place through two key strategies:

Community Outreach Meetings
Two teams of campaigners conducted eight day community sensitisation sessions in the sixteen intervention communities in March 2012. Presentations were done in the most common language to the locality where the meetings were held, based on the belief that grassroots participation is fundamental for the development of civic knowledge, skills, and values. The strategy involved the use of village meetings, social and cultural occasions, and religious gatherings as a means of transmitting civic information and messages. According to Future in Our Hands, face-to–face community sensitisation offers the opportunity for campaigners and audiences to interact, which promotes dialogue and better information dissemination and comprehension.

Radio Talk Show
The project also used community radio talk shows which were based on the same themes of human rights and voter education. The 2-hour talk shows were conducted at Paradise FM in Basse and Soma Community Radio. At Paradise FM, the programme was conducted in Wollof, Mandinka, and Sarahule, and at Soma community radio in Mandinka. The radio programme was designed to enable other communities, where the campaign team could not reach with their face to face meeting, to receive the civic knowledge on human rights. The audience both within and outside FIOH focus communities were given the opportunity to call and ask questions and make contributions in the programme.

In both activities, campaigners focused on basic human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) such as rights to shelter, water, health facilities, education, and a clean environment. This included explanations of the ten articles of the UDHR. The campaigners also focused on voting and the processes involved, and the importance of voting, particularly emphasising the importance of the National Assembly Members as the representatives of the people and encouraging the participants to vote. Other key issue areas included the rights of women and the rights of minorities (especially the disabled).

The first ten (10) articles of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights were translated into Wollof and Mandinka and developed into posters and distributed to the participants at the meetings. Each team of campaigners was given thirty-two (32) copies of the posters that they distributed to the participants at the meetings.

Rights, Governance, Elections

Future In Our Hands (FIOH) is a non-governmental organisation in The Gambia, working for enhanced access to quality education and strengthened rural communities, in order to fight poverty.