‘Personalizing Population’ Highlights UNFPA Success Stories

In 1998 the United Nations Foundation funded a small media project for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). This project, called “Personalizing Population”, was conceived as a way to focus popular media attention on population issues in general and the work of UNFPA in particular.

There were three main objectives: 1) to raise public awareness at all levels, through key media outlets, of UNFPA’s vital work in population and development; 2) to build a network of influential journalists in the Fund’s donor and programme country partners capable of covering population issues and activities in a more comprehensive and consistent fashion; and 3) to draw media attention to and increase understanding of the importance of fostering productive partnerships between the United Nations system and civil society, including NGOs, women’s groups, communities and the private sector.

Over the course of the project, from December 1998 to April 2001, there were 12 media trips to selected countries where the Fund has an active field programme. These trips were organized so that journalists from UNFPA’s main donor countries and from selected programme countries could see the Fund’s field programmes up close. Each trip involved extensive, in-depth visits to project sites, often in remote areas. They generated a wealth of feature material for magazines, newspapers, radio and television.

A total of 71 journalists participated in this project – 37 from developed countries, along with 34 from the developing world.

As a way to highlight the results of this extensive project, UNFPA has produced an integrated multimedia CD-ROM and a multimedia web site with outputs from the participating journalists, including radio programmes, TV features, magazines articles, photography and news reports.

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To request copies of the CD-ROM, please write to: serrano@unfpa.org