The client’s brief

Yes I Do (YID) Alliances Indonesia realised they needed a comprehensive communication strategy to change behavior of actors involved in child marriage in their working areas: Sukabumi, Rembang, and West Lombok.

Our insight

Before we developed the content, we revisited their baseline studies. We then held a workshop to define the right approach especially because the problem involved many actors. One of the important outcomes from that workshop was that we discovered what was believed to be the root cause, which was: for both girls and parents, the payoffs from getting married immediately are a sure bet, while they cannot see immediate payoffs of delaying marriage.

Our approach

We departed from the usual “if you marry now you risk your future, if you marry later you will get more in your future” approach that was the norm in anti child marriage campaigns. Instead, we wanted girls to curb their intent to marry immediately because there were so many fun and promising things they could do if they stayed in school and remained unmarried until adulthood. This way, we shift the narratives against child marriage, from possible future gain to certain present loss.

We wanted to rekindle girls’ excitement to experience the awesome teenhood. The modalities we proposed were:

1. YouTube drama series of a soap opera depicting teenage girls who benefited from cherishing their teenhood and preparing for their bright future, despite their social circumstances and pressures to get married as soon as possible.
2. Various social activities at village level, held by the community in collaboration with schools and local leaders, that girls and boys could attend to enliven their teenhood. Some of these activities included Glee-club, parent-teens tour, parade for girls graduating from high school instead of who got married (graduate not bride as queens of the day), girls’ camp.