“A Wave of Women’s Voices … 1000 and Counting” is an initiative that has been adopted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) from 2015 to 2017. This initiative aims to equip female young leaders across Egypt, who can form a wave of women’s voices and look forward to leading in their communities. 2000 young women across all Egyptian governorates have been trained who trained other young women in their governorates. The project adopted a “snowball effect” strategy that would encourage more women to engage in the project throughout the project period.
The Project has been very keen on using both classical and social media to both raise the awareness of the general public about the importance of female political participation and guide women who are willing to be engaged politically, but they lack the skills and tools.
Given that, Radio is one tools utilized by the Project,The radio was chosen due to the crucial role it plays, especially in rural and less developed parts of Egypt where the social media has not yet fully penetrated. Egypt has around 75 radio stations, most of which are state-owned. In spite of the lack of official data, it was estimated that radio penetration rate is between 17% and 19%, amounting to around 17 million persons listen to radio on daily basis.
Regarding the radio channel, ECWR has chosen Sawt El-Arab to be its access point to the radio audience. Sawt El-Arab (Voice of the Arabs) is one of the first and most prominent Egyptian radio channels that is based in Cairo but reaches out to most of the other Arab countries. As ECWR was keen on maximizing on the number of show audience, Swt El-Arab proposed to air the show in Ramadan to capitalize on the momentum of such a season.
Hia w Akhawatha (She & Her Sisters) was chosen to be the name of the show as it resembles the Snowball Effect approach that the Project is adopting. Hia w Akhawatha is a one-season radio show that is composed of 30 episodes, each episode lasts for 5 minutes episodes and aired on daily basis. Through her interesting and engaging style of narrating, Ms. Nehad AbolKomsan was conveying empowering and motivating messages primarily for women, but also for men. Each of the episodes was trying to correct a certain misconception or providing a specific tip to help women overcome the obstacles they face on daily basis that can hinder their engagement in the public sphere. Through these episodes, Ms. Nehad was trying to offer simple, yet new perceptions to a wide range of relevant social, economic, political and religious issues.
Measuring Success:
To insure the validity of the monitoring and evaluation process, each episode was concluded with a riddle and the audience was asked to call if they want to answer the riddle and be part of the competition to win the award. With this regard, the competition was used as a tool to assess the level of engagement of the audience to the content that the show provides.
Women’s Voices team has relied on other tools to assess the success of the Hia W Akhawtha show. The most important of these tools is the media coverage.
Another important indicator that has also showed the success of Hia w Akhawtha was the support received from the leadership of the National Council for Women (NCW). This support was expressed directly by Dr. Maya Morsy, the Head of the NCW, covered by media. Believing in both the importance of the message conveyed and the issues addressed, NCW has used his official Facebook page to post and share some of Hia w Akahwtha episodes.
Click here to listen to the “She and Her Sisters” radio show
What is after? Sustainability….
As a result of the success of the first season of Hia w Akhawtha; ECWR was contacted by Mr. Tarek Nour, a prominent media and communication figure not just in Egypt, but in the Middle East.
Nour has expressed his strong interest in capitalizing on the success of the radio show through being a partner in the production of a televised version of the show. Currently, the second session of the TV show “Nehad’s Stories” is airing on Al Qahira W Al Nas TV channel.
Please click here to watch all “Nehad Stories” episodes
