Engaging communication can promote the Global Goals

The French project “Migrant Food Festival”, a six weeks festival with 22 events, has helped deconstruct misconceptions about international migration. Consumers were presented with delicious and sustainable culinary experiences, when professional cooks and migrants came together to cook. By setting this scene, the festival valued the cultural wealth and culinary skills of migrants. Thanks to the civic engagement of the festival participants, a network of families who want to share time for discussion and meetings around cooking and gardening was created. This network will be facilitated by the same organization who implemented the project ANIS Étoilé in collaboration with organizations working with refugees or asylum seekers.

Through this project "Stories from the North - Photographic Voices from Ghana", Noorderlicht professional photographers created photographic stories from the North of Ghana with the objective of creating a more nuanced and realistic picture of a region that does not receive much attention in the Global North.”

With the project the organisation Strichting Fotografie Noorderlicht created the possibility of having new stories made by photographers from this area and inform the audience specifically about the Global Goals. The organization experienced, that communication with the Global Goals as a starting point ensured a constructive tone of the photography that is not based on victimization but takes equality as its starting point.

Photo: Evans Ahorsu

FinnWID – Women in Development Finland launched a campaign about trafficking of women to raise awareness among engaged volunteers, social work students, journalists and the public. The campaign showcased a story about a female campaign activist and former victim of trafficking who now has asylum in Finland. The life story of the activist became the topic of an article in the largest print newspaper in Finland. Consequently, it also contributed greatly to the public debate in Finnish media about the human rights aspect of trafficking. After seeing the campaign, both volunteers and students also reported that their knowledge of human trafficking, and how it is linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, has increased significantly.

The organisation Cooperacció from Barcelona made a project about the global care chain. The global care chain is a series of personal links between people across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring. For example, an older daughter from a poor family who cares for her siblings while her mother works as a nanny caring for the children of a migrating nanny who, in turn, cares for the child of a family in a rich country. The concept is well known in gender studies, but it is quite unknown in the public. The project connected gender, migration and climate change and tackles several other Global Goals.

It was especially successful at highlighting the North-South interconnectedness and the links among the Global Goals themselves. Furthermore, Cooperacció produced a documentary, published several articles in collaboration with journalists and organized several events.

Photo: Montse Giralt

The Danish Trade Union Development Agency (DTUDA) has been engaging apprentices at technical schools in global migration issues. The apprentices went to Nepal to work and live with Nepali migrant construction workers. DTUDA wanted to show that the fight for fair working rights contained in SDG 8 is a global fight across borders.

The Danish apprentices were shaken by the poor working conditions the Nepali workers were facing, as well as their willingness to immigrate and leave their homes and families in order to get a better life. Afterwards, the apprentices were telling about their personal experiences at technical schools in Denmark, where global education is not normally part of the curricula. The apprentices’ stories were reaching the technical students through their professional interest and personal involvement.

The Danish organization School Life in Nepal made a documentary about two young Dalit people. In the film, the Dalit boy and the girl tell and show different aspects of their life, such as poverty, joy, alcoholism, music, school life, gender issues and their dreams. The documentary was shown to Danish students around the same age as the protagonists. Afterwards, several students decided to arrange events where they would tell other people about the living conditions in Nepal or raise funds to the organization. Especially the issues and nuances of poverty (SDG 1) and gender roles (SDG 5) depicted in the movie mobilized them to arrange the event.

This Italian project "Power of Passports" focused on SDG10 – Reduced inequalities. The communication products of the project were a documentary and a web series that reported the personal stories of Maya women in Guatemala who are too poor to obtain a visa to move to the United States and therefore have no choice but to try the irregular path of migration. The communication products analyzed different dimensions of inequalities: Inequalities between states (some passports are more “powerful” than others), inequalities as women, inequalities as indigenous people, inequalities as poor people. Also, the organization MAIS developed a board game and a life-size replica of the game based on the documentary, where participants themselves are experiencing an illegal route and the power of different passports.

CIDOB developed the project ‘The Pakistani Diaspora in Barcelona’, aimed at overcoming stereotypes, fighting racism and acknowledging the contribution of the community of Pakistani origin to the city of Barcelona. Through a series of written features, an audiovisual piece and radio programs, the project discovered the roots of this migration and focused on the transformational role played by Pakistani women in their communities. Instead of reinforcing or just reacting to hegemonic negative narratives on migration, the project succeeded in building new constructive frames regarding the same issue. The organization identified that this is particularly relevant, as the mainstream discourse on migration is becoming more negative in Spain. The project reached new target groups in Catalonia but also implemented activities and published articles in Pakistan through collaboration with local journalists.

Photo: Anna Surinyach

The City-link Haarlem Mutare and Pletterij organized three climate debates in which Zimbabwean and Dutch experts shared their insights about sustainability and circularity and arranged an art exhibition about the same topics.

This was done in close collaboration with other civil society organizations in Haarlem, such as the World Kitchen, secondary schools, centers for nature and environmental education, a sustainability café and a sustainability design shop.

Through the project, the organization also improved their website and presence on social-media and implemented an educational program for primary schools on sustainability. Furthermore, they influenced their local policymakers to work on sustainability. As a result, Haarlem municipality joined a Global Goals-campaign by the Union of Dutch Municipalities.

Photo: Dik Bol

Helinä Rautavaara Ethnographic Museum in Helsinki developed an escape room about climate change which can be set up in a classroom. Through the game, the organization raised awareness and engaged more than 600 youth in climate action. According to a feedback survey, 76 % of the participants who gave feedback learnt about the effects of climate change in Benin and Brazil and 40% learnt that climate change is an unequal problem that causes even more inequality.

Three journalists from Egypt, Mali and India came to Brussels to write a report about how they observe climate, gender policies and transmigration* in Belgium today through their cultural glasses.  The hosting organization, Wereldmediahuis vzw, seized the opportunity to create engaging content for their social media about the visit of the foreign journalists while it was happening. This resulted in three well-read journalistic reports about the observed topics, partly due to the attention it on social media.

*Transmigration refers to persons passing through a country or place on the way to another place in which he or she intends to settle

Photo: Gie Goris

With the Activity ‘No Man's Land’ - Esperas launched a project website for documentaries.

Through the website, Esperas challenged young film makers and journalists to create documentaries about women in conflict zones while thinking about the framing of the women.

With a parallel training process, Esperas ensured that the young documentary makers became more aware of the frames through which they look at the world and pointed out the problem with framing women solely as victims of conflict instead of underpinning their role as peacemakers and activists.

Three of the documentaries reached a large audience, when they were shown on public television in Belgium.

By: Lisanne Corijn en Bram van Roy

The organization Ashar Gan organized five workshops in Piemonte in Italy for youth. Each workshop focused on one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the end of the workshops, each group of young people organized a small conference about the SDGs where youths were the experts and adults – teachers and parents – were the participants. The youths deeply understood the sense of the SDGs and the role that everyone plays in their achievement. They changed their everyday habits and started to influence their parents’ consumption habits.

Via animation and dissemination of educational materials Maison des solidarités locales et internationals enhanced the visibility of the Global Goals and promoted concrete examples of engagement to two types of audience:

• Solidarity associations: How to integrate the Global Goals into projects and actions implemented locally or internationally? How to value the contribution to the Global Goals?
• Citizens of the metropolitan area of Lyon: How to be a daily actor of the Global Goals? How to get involved with a local association?

Showing that the Global Goals can be addressed locally, by everyone, was an important factor in strengthening the power to act. The creation of spaces for meeting between citizens and associations facilitated the engagement process.