Strategic communications for community-led climate action

The challenge

Forever Sabah works at the heart of Sabah's transition to a diversified, equitable, circular economy — doing work that demands deep cultural sensitivity and community-led approaches. When they launched Sabah Climate Futures, a new platform designed to engage diverse audiences with climate data, a tension emerged: communications were happening, but it wasn't always clear what they were building towards.

That became the question we worked through together: what change do we want Sabah Climate Futures to make possible — and how can communications support that over time?

What we did

We designed and facilitated a 1.5-day workshop with communications representatives from eight project teams — shifting the focus from communications as visibility to communications as a driver of long-term behaviour change. Rooted in Forever Sabah's community-led, culturally grounded approach, the workshop gave teams practical frameworks they could put to work straight away, moving from ad-hoc tactics to strategic, audience-focused communications.

THE WORK

The workshop moved through four connected stages. We started by co-creating communication and climate objectives tied directly to each team's programmatic plans — so the communications work had something real to serve. 

From there, we ran audience empathy mapping to surface what different stakeholders actually care about, what gets in the way, and what would move them. That fed into audience journey mapping: tracing the path from awareness to action, and identifying where communications could intervene most usefully. 

Finally, teams built communication logic models that connected their tactics to measurable outcomes, so that decisions going forward wouldn't be made on instinct alone.

What came of it

By the end of the 1.5 days, something had shifted. Teams that came in thinking of communications as a reactive task — something you do when there's news to share — left with a different frame: communications as a strategic tool, tied directly to what their programmes are trying to change. That reframe is harder to achieve than it sounds. It's also harder to undo.

The work didn't stop there: Vibe Check is now developing a campaign with Forever Sabah to drive awareness of Sabah Climate Futures, translating climate science into accessible language for communities and amplifying community voices in policy conversations.