Jawaher Al Naqbi: The category aims to focus on the power of awareness campaigns to positively influence behaviour as a tool for human development

The UAE’s best behavioural change campaigns and initiatives launched by government and semi-government entities in the recent past have been brought under the spotlight by the International Government Communication Centre (IGCC), who has announced that winner of the Sharjah Government Communication Award (SGCA)’s ‘Best Behaviour Change Campaign or Initiative’ category will be decided by a public vote.

The move to introduce this particular category to public voting is in line with the IGCC’s efforts to generate community opinion and feedback on public campaigns and initiatives which are targeted towards generating awareness and driving positive behaviour change.

The IGCC, a subsidiary of Sharjah Government Media Bureau (SGMB), has selected three public awareness campaigns, one each by the Dubai Municipality (DM), Friends of Cancer Patients (FOCP) and Sharjah City Municipality (SCM), and put them up on the www.igcc.ae for public voting until March10. 

The voting has been launched by IGCC with a view to engage the UAE’s public with the theme of the upcoming edition of the International Government Communication Forum (IGCF 2019), ‘Behavioural Change Towards Human Development’. The eighth edition, set to be held on March 20 – 21 at Expo Centre Sharjah, will assess the key role of government communication in promoting positive behaviour around issues of national interest.

The category has been introduced this year, and is one of the 14 categories featuring in the sixth edition of SGCA, which seeks to recognise outstanding achievements and contributions made by local and regional authorities in government communication.

SGCA winners will be announced and honoured on the 20^th of March during the first day of the 8^th International Government Communication Forum.

The three contenders

Dubai Municipality’s campaign is focused on integrating educational institutions in their
decision-making process to improve their services by making them more relevant to societal needs. The FOCP campaign is called ‘Colour My World’, and aims to instil positivity and confidence in young cancer patients by engaging them in a series of creative activities.

Meanwhile, Sharjah City Municipality’s public awareness campaign has been created in response to a pressing problem in the UAE pertaining to unattended children meeting with unfortunate accidents and losing their lives, in many cases, by falling from balconies of residential units.

Jawaher Al Naqbi, Manager of IGCC, underscored the importance of this vote and its role in achieving the sustainable community development goals. She said: “The category aims to focus on the power of awareness campaigns to positively influence behaviour as a tool for human development. Modern communication technology makes it easier than ever for citizens to speak directly to our government, and through this public voting campaign, we seek to leverage the benefits of interconnectivity to boost public–government communication, so the latter can introduce new tools and mechanisms that can impact citizens positively and support personal as well as community growth.”

Al Naqbi added that voting for the best behaviour change campaign translates the vision of the UAE and Sharjah to bolster partnerships between state entities and all segments of the community, and at the same time, stimulate all government and semi-government entities to launch initiatives to foster positive behaviour in the community.

The nominated campaigns were selected according to specific evaluation criteria, including their goals, which must have been set on the basis of behavioural challenges] and followed up with a clearly-specified implementation strategy broken down into action plan phases.

One of the key qualifying attributes of the selected campaigns was their ability to resonate with the public, manifested in attractive messaging capable of drawing on human emotion. The campaign’s use of technology and innovation to reach out to masses, together with its ability to achieve significant impact through media coverage of the campaign and its outcomes, was also assessed.