Case Study

Title
Building Capacity and Measuring the Impact of Behavior Change Communication for P/CVE

Association Chifae (Chifae) is a local civil society organization (CSO) based in Tangier, Morocco. Chifae implemented a seven-month grant activity focused on raising the awareness of local youth about violent extremism. The project trained 15 social and education workers on communication techniques so they could implement a two-week awareness raising campaign around sports to promote tolerance and social cohesion in Beni Makkada, Tangier.

Following a five-day workshop, four to five Chifae staff (with technical support from FHI 360) developed material for Chifae’s awareness raising campaign. This material included an M&E plan to determine whether the campaign had any impact on youth knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Chifae planned to scale-up the program campaign to include the entire city of Tangier. Evaluating the results of the pilot campaign in Beni Makkada was therefore critical in collecting evidence to support Chifae’s future programming plans.

Chifae officially launched its awareness raising campaign in Beni Makkada on June 18, 2019. The campaign slogan translated as #ASpaceforAll, referring to a community that respects diversity.

The campaign included the following components:

  • A Facebook event page moderated and managed by Chifae staff. Chifae relied on several visual publications that were disseminated through the Facebook page.
  • An advertisement of the event page on a popular local news website and in a local weekly newspaper (the only local newspaper in Tangier).
  • Visual display of the campaign hashtag and slogan on 15 local soccer fields in Beni Makkada.
  • Distribution of 400 training soccer vests branded with the campaign slogan to local sports CSOs in Beni Makkada.
  • Billboards in four different locations in the soccer stadium in Tangier and in Beni Makkada.
  • A 30 second local radio spot that aired four times a day during a period of two weeks on a local radio station.

M&E Methodology and Assumptions

Chifae developed a survey (translated into Moroccan Darija) to collect baseline and endline data about youth perceptions, attitudes and behaviors in their communities. Chifae sought to understand how youth thought about tolerance and other positive values.

Chifae intentionally kept the survey simple so volunteers could easily collect data through in-person interviews. Chifae initially planned to interview the same respondents from baseline to endline to better measure the potential impact of the campaign. This process would enable Chifae to understand how respondents might change their attitudes or behaviors from before the campaign started to after it ended. Unfortunately, volunteers were not able to interview the same respondents upon the completion of the campaign, so data collection included only youth who witnessed the Chifae campaign.

The sample size for the survey was 100 youth, including youth sports/soccer fans (with a rough gender balance despite local cultural norms and restrictions on interactions between different genders in public spaces). Chifae planned for each of the six volunteers to collect a maximum of 20 questionnaire responses for a total of 100+ surveys.

One of the main assumptions was that all youth respondents had seen (or heard) about the Chifae campaign. An initial screening question was included to that effect. Chifae decided to target soccer stadiums as well as neighborhood and community soccer fields prior to the beginning of the campaign and then again after the completion of the campaign.

Chifae engaged young volunteers from the community because of their knowledge of the local context and trained them to conduct the survey. The training included a presentation about the project, the purpose of the survey and the methodology, as well as ethical and Do No Harm considerations.

Title
Summary of Results
Knowledge Attitudes Behaviors
  • 52% of youth respondents thought that the message of the campaign (calling for peace and tolerance to address violence in soccer stadiums) was clearly expressed.
  • Nearly two-thirds (63%) of all respondents agreed with the message of the campaign, showing strong belief in the overall message of tolerance for others.
  • Nearly half (47%) of all youth respondents indicated they viewed supporters of other teams much more positively at the end of the campaign.
  • Nearly 30% more youth (from 44% to 72%) felt more comfortable interacting with youth from other communities at the end of the campaign.
  • 34% more youth respondents noted they had more similarities than differences with youth supporters of another team after interacting with the #Fada2_Liljami3 campaign.
  • Prior to the campaign, one-third of youth responded that they would build trust through sportsmanship while only 14% identified communications and awareness-raising efforts as their primary trust-building method.
  • At the conclusion of the campaign, youth increasingly identified communications and dialogue (36%) as a trust-building method, almost on par with sportsmanship (39%).

Lessons Learned through Chifae’s M&E Process:

Chifae was able to confirm that youth in Beni Makkada shared a strong belief in the overall message of tolerance for others, showing a positive illustrative change in attitudes among youth witnessing the Chifae campaign and demonstrating that youth are more likely to value communicating with other youth as individuals outside of the framework of a sports competition. This learning helped Chifae plan to extend the campaign to a larger area and duplicate the campaign to raise awareness about other topics.

Chifae measured the impact of the campaign and tested staff capacities to conduct an effective social and behavior change communications campaign. M&E also allowed Chifae to identify additional technical capacity needs to improve their campaign’s effectiveness and the overall quality of their programming.

Evaluating the campaign also helped Chifae to identify important gaps in their approach. For example, Chifae plans to be more attentive to gender considerations to be better able to include women in their activities. This lesson emerged when the campaign evaluation found that very few women were surveyed due to cultural restrictions.