Child Marriage Free World:
Building a grassroots movement, from scratch
The challenge
Worldwide, child marriage is reducing slowly: in the last decade, the rate of child marriage has reduced from 23% to 18.5%. However, the global data hides the reality for millions of girls: child marriage has been increasing for girls from the poorest households in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
Using a model that had seen some promise in India, the client was launching a new, international campaign, aiming to mobilise local communities in high-prevalence countries to act to end child marriage.
Working alongside a small international team, Common Good Global was tasked by the client, Child Marriage Free World, to develop the campaign’s visual identity, voice, website, campaign materials, and outreach campaign.
The impact
100+ New Partnerships
The campaign built more than a hundred new partnerships with local and national organisations, including youth-led groups, faith communities, and professional organisations.
30+ Countries
Tens of thousands of people participated in community-organised campaign events across 30 countries - most of which have a high rate of child marriage.
2 Government Partnerships
India and Nepal committed to end child marriage. Child Marriage Free Bharat (India) and Child Marriage Free Nepal are being delivered by government organisations in partnership with civil society.
The work
Together with the client, we identified the primary audiences of schools, colleges, faith groups, and community groups. Target countries were identified based on prevalence of child marriage, combined with countries where the client already had a network of activists keen to be involved in the campaign.
The website, resources, and campaign materials were written and designed to appeal to these groups, while keeping in mind that it was critical to establish the campaign as being informed, informative, and trustworthy.
As the target countries were spread across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, all materials and the website content were translated into Arabic, French, Portuguese, and Spanish; Common Good Global managed the translation process and designed all of the translated materials. Partners managed the translations into other languages, including Hindi, Nepali, and Swahili.
The site provided up-to-date information and tutorial-style content on child marriage, as well as hosted a range of materials for different types of groups to take action in their communities.
The social outreach campaign was a critical element: this was highly focused, using a combination of MICS and DHS data to identify high-prevalence locations in each target country.
After new partners joined the campaign, the focus shifted to sharing their work and activities to get commitments from their local communities to end child marriage, as can be seen in this campaign film created by Common Good Global.
