RNW Media Annual Report 2020

2020 was a year of many unexpected challenges for the global community. At RNW Media, we adapted to a new way of working, changed our activities to respond directly to the COVID-19 crisis and tapped into our digital media expertise and creative staff to do it. We are proud to present our Annual Report 2020, highlighting our key achievements and progress from the year.

COVID-19
Throughout 2020, the key issue impacting not only all of our country teams but the entire globe was of course, COVID-19. Yet our valuable work continued, supporting young people in our digital communities worldwide with multi-media content speaking to their local concerns. Some teams produced awareness campaigns, focusing on hygiene and inspiring young people with ways to make the most of their time if in lockdown. While other teams were not only tackling the Coronavirus itself, but the parallel crises occurring from the spread of online misinformation and disinformation around COVID-19 to the rise of gender-based violence with lockdowns or love in isolation. All our online platforms were there to respond.

Annual Report 2020
Beyond COVID-19, our teams were also facing a number of other global issues ranging from peacebuilding to utilising digital tools to finding jobs to facilitating constructive discourse. From all of our work in 2020, 26 million young people accessed information via our websites to help them make informed decisions and access services. 12.7 million young people were following us on social media. Young users from around the world viewed our videos more than 171 million times and distributed our content across all our digital channels around 1.8 billion times. This crucial content produced in 2020 by our local teams in at least six different languages is designed to break gender barriers, engage with young people from different backgrounds and speak to their specific needs.

Going into 2021
Parallel to the continuous challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was an exceptionally important year for RNW Media. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs granted funding to three consortia that we are a part of – enabling us to continue and expand our digital interventions in collaboration with our strategic and implementing partners. We will work with our partners in two main intervention areas related to SDG 5: first under the SRHR Partnership Fund to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in more than 16 countries and second under the Women, Peace and Security Fund to contribute to peacebuilding in Yemen.

As we move into 2021, RNW Media has a renewed sense of purpose. We will continue with our core focus on using digital media to engage young people and create social change. We will diversify through partnerships to work on the SDGs most relevant to young people. We will pay greater attention to scaling up our best practices with a strong emphasis on technical innovation, using data for development, and co-creating online communities together with our partners. To ensure we are fit for purpose, we have brought together a team of young talented professionals from human rights experts to tech savvies, digital media innovators and experienced trainers.

You can read the full Annual Report 2020 here.