P4D’s social media presence has grown significantly over the past year. While our reach and engagement have dramatically increased over the course of the two social media campaigns in 2020, gender representation among our followers has shown clear male prominence.
This year, in our celebration of International Women’s Day on 8 March 2021, we focused our efforts on a two-week campaign to showcase women’s impacts through the P4D project and highlight how using the key social accountability tools can engender women’s empowerment.
Our campaign included a call-to-action video to join the #ChooseToChallenge campaign, 4 photographics on the key social accountability tools and how they connect with women’s issues, and a blog post on how P4D’s partners, with our support, are working to break down barriers for women in their communities.
The overarching goal of the campaign was to promote women’s rights and encourage women to engage in democratic processes in Bangladesh, as well as to improve equal gender representation among our followers. While we targeted our core cohort, in alignment with previous campaigns, we added another layer to specifically target women from our project districts. This led to remarkable results.
The boosted posts reached an astounding 1.93 million unique users during the 14-day period our campaign ran on Facebook. Compared to our longer, more complex campaigns in 2020, P4D has not achieved this amount of reach in just 14 days, until now. Furthermore, 135,703 individuals engaged with our content through likes, comments, and clicks. Also noteworthy is the fact that because of this campaign, P4D currently has roughly 24,000 followers, now with nearly half of them identifying as female due directly to the women's campaign. This is a major accomplishment that will not only support our efforts to reach more women through our upcoming campaigns but can translate to increased participation from women in our project activities moving forward, even if they’re online.
Promoting women’s participation in public policy dialogue and civic engagement is essential to further building momentum for integrity and accountability in Bangladesh. Inclusive dialogue about social accountability tools and encouraging their use among all citizens will help communities resolve local issues better, develop more equitably, and encourage active participation from all members of the community.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Platforms for Dialogue and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.