A drought risk reduction message that sticks: a communication model for foundation phase children

Abstract

Too often, children’s communication needs are not considered when it comes to important messages – especially concerning disaster risk reduction. Drought has a significant impact on children both mentally and physically, however, they are rarely told how to make themselves more resilient. Messages aimed at drought resilience are mostly presented in a format that children will not understand, or care to understand. Children have quite unique communication needs with regard to message content, language, media and culture. These needs were researched and moulded into an existing cyclical communication model that may prove to be a useful guideline in constructing a message towards drought resilience for foundation phase children. The main aim of the adapted model is to offer messages containing the “stickiness” factor.