Empower Communities to Adapt to Climate Change

Thank you for your continued support of our work to empower communities to build mitigation and resilience strategies to climate change. 

In this audio clip, we hear how scientifically-backed lessons, such as why farmers should not burn their crop fields before planting season, are weaved into dramatic storytelling. This approach to behavior change is central to our work, and it is effective because it can be linked to the emotional bonds created between audiences and media characters or personas. Over two decades of research indicate that there is a strong correlation between emotional connections to personas and lasting behavior change. 70% of surveyed listeners have already reported adopting sustainable practices! 

“With Our Feet on the Soil” (“Con los pies a la tierra”) is a radio drama that delivers critical sustainable farming education—like not burning crops—through family tensions between the younger and older generations of the Rodríguez family. The family lives inLas Cruces, a small agricultural community in a fictional country in Central America.  

Central America faces increased food insecurity due to the impact of the climate crisis. Droughts and hurricanes have caused crops to fail in a region where a majority of people rely on agriculture for food and livelihoods. PCI Media connects farmers to information and resources that improve their yields while protecting the soil through a partnership with Catholic Relief Services—who have been actively working on the issue in the region since 2015. So far, the radio drama has reached 4.2 million listeners in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.  

In our next update, we’ll explore a brand-new initiative we launched in the Philippines to engage youth in climate adaptation, helping them adopt climate-smart lifestyles.