Strengthening resilience through media in Bangladesh Final evaluation ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The report was written by Aniqa Tasnim Hossain, Khandokar Hasanul Banna, Nicola Bailey and Md. Arif Al Mamun. The authors thank Sally Gowland, Gillian Kingston, Jack Cunliffe, Lisa Robinson, Sherene Chinfatt, Richard Lace, and the rest of the team in Bangladesh for their input. BBC Media Action, the international development organisation of the BBC, uses the power of media and communication to support people to shape their own lives. Working with broadcasters, governments, other organisations and donors, it provides information and stimulates positive change in the areas of governance, health, resilience and humanitarian response. This broad reach helps it to inform, connect and empower people around the world. It is independent of the BBC, but shares the BBC’s fundamental values and has partnerships with the BBC World Service and local and national broadcasters that reach millions of people. The content of this report is the responsibility of BBC Media Action. Any views expressed should not be taken to represent those of the BBC itself or of any donors supporting the work of the charity. This report was prepared thanks to funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which supports the research and policy work of BBC Media Action. July 2017 Series editors Sophie Baskett & Sonia Whitehead | Editors Alexandra Chitty & Katy Williams | Designer Blossom Carrasco | Proofreader Lorna Fray Production editor Lucy Harley-McKeown 2 COUNTRY REPORT | BANGLADESH CONTENTS Acknowledgements 2 Executive summary: what’s the story? 6 1. Introduction 8 1.1 Project background 8 1.2 Project objectives 10 1.3 Project activities 14 1.3.1 Reality TV series: Amrai Pari 14 1.3.2 TV PSA: Working Together 16 1.3.3 Radio magazine programme: Amrai Pari 16 1.3.4 Social media: Amrai Pari Facebook page 16 1.3.5 Community outreach 16 1.3.6 Capacity strengthening of NGOs 16 1.3.7 Capacity strengthening of local media 17 2. Research 18 3. Evaluation findings 22 3.1 Headline indicators 22 3.2 Audience reach of programming 23 3.2.1 Reach of the programmes 23 3.2.2 Amrai Pari’s audience profile 26 3.2.3 Working Together’s audience profile 28 3.3 Engagement with the programming 29 3.4 Impact on audience-level resilience outcomes 33 3.4.1 Increasing perceived risk 37 3.4.2 Improving knowledge 37 3.4.3 Building efficacy 37 3.4.4 Prompting discussion 39 3.4.5 Were programme viewers more likely to prepare for extreme weather? 39 3.5 Impact on NGOs and the media sector 42 3.5.1 Capacity strengthening with NGOs 42 3.5.2 Capacity strengthening with local media 45 BANGLADESH | COUNTRY REPORT 3 CONTENTS 4. Conclusions: to what extent did the project meet its objectives? 47 5. Appendices 49 1. Cumulative reach calculations 49 Endnotes 50 Left: Community members working on the floating garden in Amrai Pari Cover: Members of the community planting a floating garden in Amrai Pari BANGLADESH | COUNTRY REPORT 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: what’s the story? Future generations will be better able to cope with natural disasters if they watch Amrai Pari. Male Amrai Pari viewer, 20–45, south-west Bangladesh, qualitative evaluation study, 2014 In the last 30 years, Bangladesh has experienced nearly 200 climate-related disasters including droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, cyclones and storm surges. The impact of these events has been exacerbated by poverty, high population density, a flat and low-lying landscape and, in some cases, inefficient institutional structures. Weather-related events have killed thousands, destroyed homes and devastated livelihoods in a country where farming remains the main source of income for almost half the population.i The 2012 Climate Asia surveyii demonstrated that most people in Bangladesh were aware of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and felt a strong sense of personal responsibility to take action. However, over half of respondents (56%) did not know how to respond to the changes they were facing and just 51% felt prepared for a future cyclone, with the poorest people feeling least prepared.iii The identified barriers to action included: not knowing how to respond, a lack of resources, a perception that no one else in their community was taking action, a feeling that the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should provide support, and a perception that whatever they did alone or as a community would have little effect.iv Funded by DFID, under the Global Grant project,v BBC Media Action’s resilience project was designed on the back of these Climate Asia findings and aimed to help Bangladeshis cope better with sudden shocks, like cyclones, and adapt to long-term stresses, such as drought and changing rainfall patterns. The project ran between 2013 and 2017 and, in its final year, was co- funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO). Its core outputs were the reality TV programme Amrai Pari (Together We Can Do It) that aimed to inspire people to take action by showing communities adopting simple and cheap techniques, and the TV public service announcement (PSA) Working Together that aimed to increase awareness about why it was important to prepare for crisis and how communities could do this, as well as motivating viewers to take action. BBC Media Action also produced eight radio magazine programmes around Amrai Pari, created a dedicated Facebook page and carried out capacity strengthening with local NGOs and radio broadcasters to improve practitioners’ ability to communicate effectively with communities about natural hazards. BBC Media Action conducted a mix of quantitative and qualitative research throughout the project to inform its development and evaluate its impact. Two nationally representative household surveys and two tracker surveys were carried out during the project, alongside qualitative studies with audiences, and NGOs and local radio broadcasters who took part in the capacity-strengthening activities. In total, BBC Media Action spoke to more than 10,000 people in Bangladesh during project research. 6 COUNTRY REPORT | BANGLADESH Key findings from the research Despite an estimated 22.5 million Bangladeshis tuning into BBC Media Action’s resilience programming over the project’s lifetime, the projects flagship output, Amrai Pari, struggled to maintain its audience following a change in broadcaster from state-owned Bangladesh TV (BTV) to ATN Bangla, a cable and satellite channel. In the transition, its reach dropped from 15.8 million in 2015 to 5.9 million the following year. In 2016, programming, including a TV PSA, reached 11.4 million people. Amrai Pari reached an audience representative of both men and women; this is unusual for a factual programme in Bangladesh which often struggle to engage female audiences. It was popular with 15–24-year-olds and attracted people living in rural and urban areas. Although Amrai Pari initially struggled to reach those in the lowest education brackets in 2014, this improved over time. Viewers found Amrai Pari educational and inspiring. They talked about how it stood out from contemporary shows in that it tried to encourage people to be self-reliant and to work collectively. They appreciated that the show demonstrated new and replicable techniques that were relevant to them and seeing people like them take small actions gave them confidence that they could do the same. Almost half (47%) of Amrai Pari viewers reported they had taken action (such as storing food, learning a new skill and diversifying the crops they grew) as a result of watching the programme. More regular viewers were more likely to report impact: 69% of those who watched five or more entire episodes said they had taken action. Beyond these self-attributed actions, advanced analysis showed that even after controlling for other factors that might influence whether people take action or not (such as their age, education or income level), Amrai Pari viewers were more likely to take action than non-viewers. The majority (78%) of the audience felt Amrai Pari had improved their understanding of how to prepare for extreme weather or natural hazards, or to make changes to their lifestyles or livelihoods to cope with longer-term changes in the environment. Regular viewers were more likely to feel they could take individual action without government support than non-viewers. Advanced analysis (structural equation modelling) helped BBC Media Action understand this relationship further. It suggested that Amrai Pari influenced the uptake of resilient actions via two pathways: through increasing awareness of risks, which in turn drove action; and through reducing perceived need for government support, which is linked to higher self- and collective efficacy, and ultimately increased resilient behaviour. The research also found that BBC Media Action’s capacity-strengthening activities played a key role in supporting better coordination between NGOs working in disaster risk reduction and communities in the disaster-prone Barisal region. All participants said that the training sessions, improved their understanding of the need for audience research and systematic design of communication (including two-way communication). Smaller, local NGOs particularly benefitted from this training – they found it easier to implement communication strategies because they had a greater influence on how their organisations operated. Large organisations said the training had helped reinforce their prior knowledge. BANGLADESH | COUNTRY REPORT 7 1. INTRODUCTION This report presents a synthesis of all research completed under the Global Grant resilience project in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016. The main focus of this report is the evaluation of the project’s impact on the outcomes it set out to achieve in its theory of change. Where relevant, this report also draws on formative research and monitoring data collected throughout the project, as well as relevant data from external sources.