PRIVATE: PMC ANNOUNCES NEW STRATEGIC PLAN TO REACH MORE PEOPLE
In 2014, we at Population Media Center (PMC) began to critically analyze our impact. We assessed our work, current and historic, and the state of numerous related fields to determine how PMC could strategically expand to maximize delivering on our mission.
The resulting Vision 2025 strategic plan identifies an aggressive but realistic proposal for ten years of expansion. Efforts will center on 35 Focus Countries, chosen according to carefully determined criteria and consideration of PMC’s business model, ongoing impact evaluation methods, and partnership opportunities.
Vision 2025 is a reflection of how effective PMC’s use of entertainment-education is and can be when applied to complex challenges. The power of our communications strategy combined with need for change on many fronts make it clear to us that we must scale up our efforts in order to propel a healthier future for all people and the planet.
PMC uses entertainment to promote social and cultural change by addressing the interconnected issues of the full rights of women and girls, population, and the environment. In doing so, our programs empower people to live healthier and more prosperous lives, while contributing to stabilizing global population at a level at which people can live sustainably with the world’s resources.
For Vision 2025, PMC analyzed several global indicators to assess where PMC can have the biggest impact. We created an 11-indicator scorecard that helps us determine where our approach can be the most effective. These indicators are within the realm of human rights, health, environment, and demography. This scorecard enabled us to identify 35 Focus Countries. Currently working in 10 countries, PMC aims to be working in 30 countries by 2025.
PMC has been training local writers, producers, and actors all around the world to bring entertaining, long-running dramas to huge audiences since its founding in 1998. In our efforts to reach Vision 2025, we will not sacrifice quality for quantity. We will continue the elements that have made our dramas successful—particularly our specifically tailored storytelling, local capacity building, and rigorous evaluations of impact. We will also work to continually strengthen and train our in-country teams so that they may readily contribute to PMC’s expansion efforts.
The evolution of mass media continues to open opportunities for PMC’s approach to create change at national or regional scales. Vision 2025 illuminates the ways in which PMC’s approach strengthens the work of funders and partners working on national scales, which will remain a focus. PMC’s incredible ability to drive a demand for services and to open space for difficult conversations creates opportunities for shifting social norms in order to maximize the work of others on the ground.
PMC greatly appreciates the role of our partners in each of our projects. Isolated efforts – no matter how successful – always achieve less than cooperative initiatives. We seek to enhance our network of relationships to include new and renewed partners in the areas of implementation and service provision, capacity building, advocacy and financing.
It’s PMC’s ability to catalyze change, empowering people for individual change but also giving them the means of continuing to evolve their thinking and explain it to others that offers long-term change. Members of the community, consciously or not, determine and drive what is “normal” for a community, and PMC’s programs reliably motivate people to choose a new, more positive “normal.”
The deeply-entrenched issues PMC addresses, ranging from eliminating child marriage to promoting reproductive health services or sustainable farming, require holistic, nuanced approaches. PMC’s Vision 2025 is an exciting roadmap for generating more good in the world.
About Population Media Center
Population Media Center is a nonprofit leader in entertainment-education dedicated to women’s rights and empowerment, population stabilization, and the environment. For the past two decades, PMC’s entertainment programming has promoted social and cultural change and has helped 500 million people in more than 50 countries.