CASE STUDIES
ARAB FOUNDATION FOR FREEDOMS AND EQUALITY DIGITAL SAFETY SERIES
The mission of the Foundation is to encourage and support sexual health, sexuality gender and bodily rights movements in the Middle East and North Africa through capacity building, knowledge production, protection and advocacy.
SERVICES USED:
Learning experience design, concept generation, character design, graphic design, content and script writing, animation
INDUSTRY:
Not for profit / charitable organisation
KEY DETAILS_
THE CHALLENGE_
Arab Foundation For Freedoms And Equality wanted to develop explainer animations to support their face-to-face trainings & workshops about their “Safety First” program that pertains to staying secure and safe online especially as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. The main objective behind the project was to affect behavioral change in the learners when it comes to developing habits that ensure their online safety, especially as they belong to a minority group in the region.
The main challenge was to transform dry and quite technical material into easy–to–comprehend learning content that will not only get the information across but also engage learners from different backgrounds in the MENA region to want to know more about the subject and in effect change their behavior. The animations needed to be informative, relevant, and inclusive of and culturally sensitive to the LGBTQ audience in the diverse MENA region.
THE SOLUTION_
To maintain the audience’s engagement we opted for whimsical situational animations based around three characters. Rajaa: Gay, Jamal: Bisexual & Nour: Non Binary.
Our protagonists encounter different culturally relevant situations, which through their experience the audience is informed about the principles, risks & precautions of digital safety.
Our main objective was to make sure that the content was well-received and really helped change behaviour for our target learners:
- We created original fun, and lovable characters belonging to the LGBTQ+ community that the learners can relate to. These characters went on to become the face of some programs in AFE!
- We wrote humorous, light-hearted scenarios where the characters learn about a topic of online safety in a witty, entertaining manner. This made the material less dry and more approachable; we didn’t just explain the technicalities, but more importantly showed how they relate to the learners’ daily lives.
- We produced dynamic, vibrant animations that relied on visual representation of the concepts to reduce cognitive load and deliver the information a simple and clear way.
THE RESULT_
Rajaa, Jamal & Nour take us on a whimsical journey to discover digital safety, through five situational animations.
Upon completion of the project, the project was so well-received that the client requested an expansion to develop five graphic stories based on the same concept to cover additional topics within the scope of digital safety.
