Music video & mini-documentary help challenge social norms that support child marriage

Background

Music video & mini-documentary help challenge social norms that support child marriage.

Rooftop collaborated with UNICEF’s South Sudan country office to create a national campaign to challenge the societal conventions that favour child marriage. The campaign was aimed primarily at parents who feel pressurised to marry off their young daughters due to economic and social challenges.

Challenge

Challenging parents’ ideas around child marriage.

Child marriage is a very challenging topic, especially in countries where the practise is still widely accepted. It was within this complex, nuanced context that Rooftop was tasked with creating a campaign to address the deep-rooted tradition in South Sudan.

Research has proven that child marriage has a major impact on girls’ education, health (physical and mental), development and their economic opportunities in the future. And yet, studies show that more than 52% of girls in South Sudan are married before they turn 18 – one of the highest rates in the world.

However, when girls are given the chance to complete their education instead of being forced into early marriage, this contributes towards the empowerment, health, and well-being of girls as well as the economic and social upliftment of the broader community.

This is the message that UNICEF wanted to share through a national campaign in South Sudan.

Rooftop’s strategy for the campaign included several communication tools, with a primary focus on video storytelling. From the outset, we ensured that we had a clear understanding of child marriage within South Sudan so that we could create a campaign that was relevant to, and resonated with, the local audience.

Solution

Using influencers and storytelling to spotlight alternatives to child marriage.

Rooftop’s collaboration with the UNICEF team in South Sudan was key to the success of this project.

UNICEF’s partnership with a young reporter youth group enabled us to test and adapt our conceptual thinking. Together, we developed a strategy to effectively communicate UNICEF’s messaging in a way that was authentic to the region – made for South Sudanese people, by South Sudanese people.

Rooftop’s production team spent 12 days in South Sudan capturing a wide range of content to support the campaign’s rollout. This included a total of six videos (including two animations), multiple cutdowns for social media and radio distribution as well as stills photography.

We created a music video featuring Dynamq, a popular artist from Sudan as well as a mini documentary that featuring Zabib, a former child bride turned activist who campaigns for the rights of girls in her country.

Both videos highlighted different viewpoints, including those of parents, healthcare workers, community chiefs, government members, and individuals affected by child marriage.

The campaign was launched on World Children’s Day, 20 November 2023.
The campaign was targeted at parents, community leaders, influencers, and children.

The Result

The campaign will continue for the first 3 months of 2024, after which we will consolidate the results.