The Challenge

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains one of the most significant issues that women and girls in Jordan face. GBV in Jordan, and the Middle East, is driven by multiple intertwined and interconnected factors. Limited knowledge and awareness of what is an act or experience of domestic violence is reinforced by limited understanding of individual rights.

Gender norms and the imbalance of power in public and private spheres is deeply rooted in harmful social norms and the belief in men’s dominance and right to control their family members. Although Jordan has adopted a number of progressive policies that in theory would ensure women’s access to rights, the legal framework remains lenient, favouring the perpetrator and does not fully facilitate women’s access to justice. It is in this context, violence against women and girls persists in Jordan.

Objectives

The objective of our project with the American Bar Association under their Rule of Law Initiative was to:

1. Raise awareness of GBV and increase demand for response services in Jordan

2. Develop the capacity of CBOs to design and implement social behavioural change communications campaigns that can increase engagement with the communities they serve

What we did/ Methodology

1. Rapid Research: MAGENTA conducted rapid desk-based research and conducted in person consultations with local partners to answer the following research questions:

   • What are the drivers of gender-based violence in Jordan, and what are the barriers to access services that women and girls in your communities’ face?

   • What types of awareness raising activities do their organization carry out? What are some outreach mechanisms employed, what are the challenges and success of these activities?

   • What kinds of awareness raising, information and prevention materials do their organizations use, and what kinds of materials do you think could be helpful to increase awareness of their services, or that they would need support in developing?

   • What are their organizations’ communications capacity building gaps and needs?

2. . Capacity Development Workshop: MAGENTA conducted a two-day participatory workshop style training with 23 participants from 9 partner CBOs/ CSOs. The workshop used an experiential learning approach where partners were encouraged to engage in hands-on exercises to develop target audience profiles and key messages for their campaigns.

   Training objectives included:

   • Increase understanding of SBC approaches and frameworks and how they can be applied to increase effectiveness of communications

   • Learn how to develop key messages and identify effective approaches to use in an SBC campaign.

   • Enhance facilitation skills of partners to delivery engaging and participatory awareness raising sessions.

   • Workshop Approach

     • We heard loud and clear that while the CSOs/CBOs would like to push the boundaries of existing ways to communicate with their audiences, maintaining and building trust is critical given the nature of their work.

     • Carrying out an behavioural drivers analysis exercise supported the partners to contextualize content which responded to the community’s needs and aimed to engage and connect, rather than create suspicion or mistrust.

     • The partners wanted to engage more men around the topic of domestic violence, gender roles and power dynamics in the household, but were not sure how to without creating negative reactions. Ways to do this through target audience analysis were explored during the 2 day workshop and woven into the bespoke communications toolkit.

3. Co-created Campaign & SBCC Toolkit:

   • MAGENTA utilized insights gathered during the research and workshop to develop a communications toolkit designed to support development of the partners organisations outreach campaigns.

   • In parallel MAGENTA lead the co-creation of key campaign messages and developed a branded creative approach with the partner organizations.

   • All materials were developed in Arabic to ensure resonance with the audience, and then back translated into English.

Key Messages

• Attending the workshop was for my son.

• Get rid of what harms you.

• Together to get rid of violence.

• Dialogue is the first step.

• Respond respectfully to respect.

• Let’s fulfill our religious duty.

• The law is with you.

• Access to services has become simpler.

• Continuous dialogue is in your family’s favor.

Outcomes & Outputs

1. A two-day participatory SBCC capacity development workshop was conducted with 23 participants from 9 partner CBOs/ CSOs across Jordan. Evaluation of the training provided positive results indicating that all partners found the training useful and practical to apply

2. An SBCC Toolkit was developed to support the CBOs/ CSOs communications teams to develop effective and engaging SBCC campaigns, including:

   • Three posters (20 printed copies of each for each partner organization- 540 copies in total)

   • One brochure (50 printed copies for each partner organization -450 copies in total)

   • Nine social media posts (graphic and post text)

   • Two scripted and produced audio messages

   • Suggested dissemination plan for the GBV awareness campaign

   • Facilitator/Trainer’s guide to increase engagement at awareness raising sessions

   • PowerPoint template for presentations and awareness raising sessions

   • Campaign branding guidelines for reference and use by implementing partners