While each year the celebrations of Desertification and Drought Day (DDD) are hosted by one country officially, all nations have their own engagement activities to generate awareness and inspire action for drought mitigation and resilience. Our focus was on aligning and inspiring countries to push communications under one key theme globally, aligned with UNCCD’s agenda, to maximize the reach of its message.

To develop a theme that resonates with global audiences, our team analyzed some of the flagship publications of UNCCD, identifying common messages among the engagement campaigns of the year to ensure alignment and continuation, and reviewed past themes for DDD to identify areas of improvement. We determined that we needed a theme that conveyed optimism and hope, and expressed the key message in a non-technical, emotional way.

Our final proposed theme focused on drought resilience and collective action: “Rising from drought together”, in Spanish, “Superando Juntos las Sequías”, or in French, “Tous Ensemble pour Vaincre la Sécheresse”.

The optimistic and collaborative spirit of the theme was then reflected through a logo and variety of graphic assets that could fit the diverse communication needs of countries, including posters, banners, social media graphics, animations, and postcards in different languages that focused on drought resilience. We also developed an accompanying visual identity manual so countries could know how to and how not to use these materials.

The theme as well as the graphic assets were used in the lead up, during, and after Desertification and Drought Day not only in Spain, the host country of the activities that year, but all over the world.

The theme was used in various speeches from high-level staff from UNCCD, as well as political officers of various governments to raise awareness about the importance of taking action to be more drought resilience.