INNOVATION SPOTLIGHT
Ampitapitao! Amplifying Local Knowledge and Closing the Gap between Local Perspectives and Decision-Making
How a new advocacy approach – involving 8,000 community-submitted comments and a creative magazine series – bridged the gap between local perspectives and national decision-making
July 2022
The Starting Point
In Madagascar, decisions about youth development and health are often made far from the communities they affect. Local knowledge and lived experience rarely reach the people setting national policy. That gap leads to programs that miss the mark — or miss youth altogether.
In Brief
This report shares Projet Jeune Leader's "Ampitapitao" (Pass It On) approach: a magazine series that captured over 8,000 comments from local communities and brought that perspective straight to national decision-makers. It's a creative model for closing the gap between grassroots reality and policy.
Key Takeaways
→ It took a three-stage process: create local magazines to gather community input, synthesize what's learned, then produce national magazines that carry those voices to decision-makers.
→ Nearly 20,000 community members received the local magazines; 8,498 handwritten comments came back.
→ National magazines used real community quotes to make the case for one clear ask per topic — "The Thing" decision-makers should do differently.
→ The magazines became a valuable tool in a broader effort to build lasting two-way relationships between PJL and national stakeholders, not just one-off advocacy.
Local Magazines
We developed four magazines distributed to nearly 20,000 youth, parents, school officials, and other community members across three regions of Madagascar. Our team used stories, articles, and questions to inspire readers to share their reactions and lived experiences on key topics in youth SRH.
To collect readers’ responses, we placed blank sheets of paper in the back of each magazine, which our community-based Educators collected. During the last two months of the 2021-2022 school year, the PJL team received 8,498 written comments from community readers.
National Magazines
We developed four issues for decision-makers focused on the same themes as our locally oriented magazines. Key messages in each issue were centered around “The Thing” we want decision-makers and technical advisors to do differently in their work related to the topic. The magazines shared the synthesized local knowledge, values, and priorities we heard from community readers in the locally oriented magazines and included actual comments from community members.
Projet Jeune Leader’s team then disseminated these magazines to dozens of key national decision-makers and technical advisors. We focused on two-way outreach: using the magazines to open a conversation and build meaningful and lasting relationships.
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