In a bid to improve the level of information Moreland Council created and experimented for six years before it launched the CALDCOM Handbook as part of the 2010 Cultural Diversity Week and World Harmony Day Celebrations and since its launch the concept has grown a life of its own.
The CALDCOM Handbook is a collection of Storyboards that bypass expensive multiple translations and cut through the language barrier using pictures to tell a story. Each story is carefully crafted to convey messages that tell newcomers about services, civic life and basically what life is like in Australia.
These animated “guides to socially-aware living” span themes including how to vote, caring for the elderly, maternal and child health services, responsible pet ownership, problem gambling and surviving an Australian heatwave.
The storyboards feature a community of easily identifiable “local” characters, who have been developed over more than five years and independently road-tested among various Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) groups around Moreland, and beyond.
Over the past 12 months, the storyboards have been recognised in both state and national communication forums as an ever growing number of organisations catch on to their simple, highly effective modus operandi.
The Storyboards do what councils try to do on a daily basis and get information through to all residents which is something the research confirms. To test them Moreland engaged the services of Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre (SMRC) which conducted focus groups with an Assyrian/Chaldean Youth group, a Sudanese men’s group, and a Multi-Cultural mothers’ group (primarily made up of Eritrean, Somalian, Saudi Arabian and Lebanese nationalities).
The focus group testing centred around Storyboards with messages on Maternal Health, Domestic Violence and Wellbeing, Dealing with Influenza, and Responsible Gambling and the results were refreshingly positive.
Each of the focus groups were asked a series of multiple choice questions to confirm their understanding of the content of the story boards, to determine whether they had learnt much from them and whether they would provoke behavioural change. These questions were designed to ensure that the messages were being communicated effectively, and to gauge whether that information would have an effect on behaviour that would improve community wellbeing through changing practices and accessing government and community services.
An average of 87 per cent of respondents concluded that the storyboards were an excellent way of communicating, while 63 per cent of participants said they would do something different after using the storyboard.
Story telling is the basis of every culture. We talk to one another to find out things. It helps us understand how things work. These storyboards are designed to help people read the “meaning” rather than the “words”. After all – a picture is worth a thousand words.
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