A youth-centred brand voice for a youth-led project
Dasra
Context
By the youth for the youth
The Dasra 10to19 Adolescent Collaborative partnered with the Jharkhand Government to test and implement youth-led solutions for adolescents. They worked on improving and detailing the existing RKSK Scheme that addresses various youth issues such as health and wellness.
Dasra approached Studio Subu to become their communications partners in this journey, with the role of branding, documenting, and showcasing the ongoing project work and its impact.
Project Overview
Creating a brand that resonates with the youth
One of the key aspects of this project was that the need, solutions and implementation of the solutions were co-created and led by the youth of the community. We wanted to create a project name and brand that reflected the youthfulness and youth voice of the project. We used pop colours, youthful illustrations and fun design shapes and assets to bring out this personality. The photography and video clip choices were also intentionally capturing youth in action, engagement, and fun.
Building Awareness about the Project across stakeholders
We wanted to showcase the project and its impact to multiple audiences (the government, donors, other youth NGOs). We used multimedia to build awareness and engagement with our work. This included mini-reports that were mobile-friendly and could be shared across WhatsApp, newsletters, one-pagers, social media posts, stories, and brand and project-level videos. We also created a microsite that housed a lot of the ongoing content and updates of the project at varying stages (abmeribaari.in)
Along with building awareness, we also wanted to generate engagement on the topic with other stakeholders. We hosted a webinar to bring audiences together to discuss the work around youth solutions. We also wrote a few articles that were published in external digital publications that were aimed to spark dialogue around the work, the challenges faced, our learnings and how to approach solutions for the youth in the most effective manner.
Designing Accessible Materials for Program Implementation
We worked closely with the Dasra team and the implementation partners to design exciting and easy-to-use materials for the implementation of the program on-ground. Since it was primarily a youth led program implementation and it was important for us to package the material in a way was easy to understand and work with. We designed the program handouts, instruction guides and the final SOP that was delivered to the state government.
We had to keep in mind that these materials had to be printed locally in remote villages, so we kept formats, sizes as standard as possible that would work with any printer. We designed materials in black and white ink (for costs and logistics) and encouraged the teams to use any coloured paper to print so that they would look colourful and differentiated.
Documenting and Showcasing Impact through a variety of mediums
We created a mid-project and an end-of-project impact report to showcase the reach, outcomes and impact of the project. While the MEL partner collected detailed data on the outcomes and impact, our goal with the reports was to humanise the data and give an overview of what we were able to reach. Our reports were a combination of selective quantitative data, and qualitative content in the form of stories, testimonials, video clips, voices, examples, and photographs that brought the project to life.
We created two project films (mid year and end of year) to showcase the implementation of the project and capture youth voices - their experiences in both implementing and receiving the program. We visited the communities in Jharkhand multiple times to first understand and then capture the project.
Our approach to impact documentation was intentionally unstructured. We wanted to engage with the program as audience members (and not disrupt or curate anything specifically for the film), which allowed us to get very authentic footage and genuine testimonials. It was powerful to see how confidently the youth of Jharkhand were leading the program.
Big wins
The Abmeribaari Youth Solutions Program was well received by multiple stakeholders, and we were happy to see the level of engagement across partners, funders and government stakeholders.
The collaborative effort of Dasra and their partners resulted in their SoPs being recognised by the State and used by every district in Jharkhand. Additionally, the materials for the program have been adopted nationally and circulated across all states with the National Health Mission for them to implement the program on-ground.