Planning a project, running a successful fundraising campaign, implementing the project, and finally evaluating it before presenting a new proposal: this is how social development projects typically work from the perspective of implementing partners and funders.
Most projects are financed on the basis of a clear implementation plan agreed by funders and implementing partners. But what if we try to be "disruptive" by identifying and quickly testing different selected solutions to find the one that satisfies and impacts the target audience, convincing the funder before they fully commit to the project? This is precisely what CAMECO attempted with a media project from the Diocese of Tamatave in Madagascar, received from Kindermissionswerk (KMW) for screening.
Concerned about the children's rights in their territory, the diocesan authorities decided to use their media outlet, Radio Télé Catholique Masôva (RTCM), to launch a series of programmes promoting children's rights. The first version of the project was submitted to CAMECO for evaluation by Kindermissionswerk, the donor organisation contacted by the diocese. The radio plan involved a series of interviews with experts on children’s rights – a traditional planning approach with predetermined objectives, results, and budgets. The funder’s role was mainly to accept or reject the proposal.
When approached by KMW for technical advice, CAMECO had the two usual options: formally analyse the project as it is and give a positive or negative technical opinion, or suggest to assist the diocese in improving the submitted proposal. For this particular project, CAMECO suggested a third way. We encouraged the funder to approve the project (and its budget) in principle, while allowing CAMECO to intervene directly in the planning process by conducting a practice-oriented Design Thinking (DT) workshop. The objective was to present a project proposal to the donor agency based on reality-checked media products on children’s rights – not just conceived and planned on paper, but developed through a creative planning process involving all diocesan media stakeholders, identifying, selecting, and testing multiple solutions to choose the best ones that genuinely satisfied the target groups involved in the creative process.
Upon acceptance of this proposal, Mambulu Ekutsu, the CAMECO officer for Francophone Africa, organised a two-week working session in Tamatave in September 2024, focusing on a
Design Thinking sprint. The workshop involved 10 participants, including RTCM producers and staff from the diocesan development office – ODDIT. The workshop was conducted in two phases and coordinated by CAMECO with the assistance of a local audiovisual expert, Mr Andriamahazosoa Jacques, and the diocesan collaboration.
Phase 1: Design sprint - Understanding the problem and generating ideas and solutions
The first phase of the workshop aimed at helping participants understand the problem, identify the target groups, their needs, and how these needs could be met through media productions. Participants were then guided to generate several ideas for media content and to select those with the potential to effectively address the issues identified at the beginning of the DT workshop. This phase concluded with the selection of two media concepts, followed by a presentation session to a sample of the target audience. This step, known in design terminology as "testing", allowed participants to understand whether their ideas, translated into media concepts, truly addressed the aspirations of the target audiences. In the event of test failure, the idea generation and selection process could be repeated before returning to the audience sample for a second test.
The good news in our case was that there was no need to repeat the cycle of idea generation, selection, and transformation into media concepts. Participants produced two media concepts that quickly convinced their audience during testing:
1. A radio show programme on children's rights and societal issues in Tamatave, bringing together local authorities, parents, and children, providing the latter with a platform for expression.
2. A reality TV show focusing on parental education, highlighting the effects of family issues on children, and proposing solutions.
Phase 2: Agile planning and first real tests
The design thinking workshop lasted four days. Once the two concepts were validated, the next step was an agile project management phase to quickly plan the transformation of these concepts into real media products for their first test with the target audience. This task was completed during the second week of CAMECO's mission, with the support of audiovisual expert Mr Andriamahazosoa Jacques. The first production tests of both radio and TV concepts were successfully completed and tested within the allocated time, to the satisfaction of the audience, who also suggested possible improvements. This marked the end of CAMECO’s on-site mission, transitioning to a remote coaching phase.
The goal of this design thinking (and “doing”) mission was to support the partner in producing innovative media content and testing it until "master" versions were achieved — improved productions refined through iterative production and testing cycles. The test productions were not officially broadcast but made available to a sample of the target audience on a closed WhatsApp and Facebook group managed by RTCM.
The coaching of six test productions lasted three months, culminating in a final coaching meeting in December 2024, where diocesan leaders adopted the two show concept and contacted KMW for approval of new production and broadcast plans utilising RTCM's official media channels.
KMW’s approval of the new production schedule was significant since the unit production costs of these two new media concepts were far higher than those of the initially proposed project. For instance, the original project involved producing 120 radio programmes over twelve months, but given the higher unit costs of the new radio concept, RTCM could only produce a minimal number of programmes. KMW approved the new production quantities with the same budget agreed in its initial contract with the diocese.
Lessons Learned
