Communication Nights are a great way to deliver information to the community in an entertaining way. These events attract a large percentage of the community so they are very effective at reaching them with important development messages.
A Communication Night requires a lot of preparation because of the large number of people participating. We recently prepared for an event in one Bac Giang Province community. We started with a meeting on December 12th between all the different stakeholders where we decided what needed to be communicated and the best ways to communicate those messages (dance, drama, song, quiz, for example). The potential participants were also selected.
Two weeks later, we selected the specific performances to be presented at the event. There are 14 villages in the community and each village was slated to prepare one performance. On that day, we previewed all of them and selected eight performances from the villages, two performances from the schools, and four performances by volunteers. We must be very sensitive in this process because all the presenters have worked hard to prepare and not all of them can perform at the event.
After the selection, all the performances have to be revised and practiced more before the night of the event arrives.
After all the preparations, our Communication Night took place January 3rd. On that day, the weather was really cold however there were 1000 people in attendance. The topic of the night was Caring for and Educating Teenagers. We wanted to help parents know how to effectively guide the development of their teenaged children.
The local people say that these performances are always better than a professional event. People can see their husband, wife or children on stage presenting really enjoyable dancing and singing. YWAM Mercy will continue to use this kind of event to effectively educate and raise awareness in communities.
