The Communication Initiative - An Introduction
THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE
WHY?
Major development challenges remain - including to reduce poverty, increase people's active participation at all levels of government, create and sustain independent media, decrease HIV/AIDS, improve the reality of human rights, secure a healthy future for children, improve natural resource management, support community voices and progress action across other major development themes.
HOW?
Crucial to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of all development action on these challenges will be: A. Processes that develop and support networks of people active on these priority issues: - Sharing knowledge, ideas and experiences; and - Critically reviewing and debating development policy and practice Powerpoint slide B. Communication and media development strategies that support people, communities, and media: communicating to: voice their perspectives and ideas; debate local, national, and international policies; preserve and advance independent media, organise to achieve their goals; identify and address social norms and behaviours considered problematic; and exercise their rights.
WHAT? The Communication Initiative is the online community, social network, and knowledge sharing space developed by a group of Partner agencies for the community of people people working on major development issues such as: HIV/AIDS, Natural Resource Management, Poverty, Children, Rights, Democracy and Governance, and Polio with a particular interest in communication and media initiatives and strategies such as Radio, Media Development, Entertainment, and Digital Technologies. Across all of these issues there is a significant, priority emphasis on research and evaluation - from impact data to methodologies There are specific, major initiatives for Africa and Latin America [in Spanish] - these are run and managed from Johannesburg and Bogota. ACTIVITIES The CI supports people in this community to share and learn from each other's programme experiences, strategic thinking, evaluation and research results; identify relevant support for their work through materials, training, events, awards, funding opportunities, jobs and consultancy support; and to consider, review, and debate relevant strategic and policy issues through contributing and commenting on policy blogs, voting and commenting on polls (see right column), and reviewing the change theory and planning base that underpin and guide their actions. ENGAGEMENT Network - There are over 75,000 people from thousands of development organisations ranging from small, local NGOs in economically poor communities to global decision makers in large international agencies who have joined and participate in this network - this grows at 15 per day, on average - 65% are in [so called] developing countries - 70% are communicators/media - 30% are policy makers, funders, techncial experrts in other areas Site Use - Over the past 12 months [June 08 to May 09] there have been 2,800,000 individual user sessions with multiple page views per session on the portal - Google Urchin stats - 70% of site use is from developing countries The network has contributed over 35,000 knowledge summaries. In the past 12 months, users accessed the links to the original and substantive knowledge 200,000 plus times. **** IMPACT - Network Survey [2,335 respondents] 86 % had used The CI to improve their work - 45% of the ratings that users completed on knowledge summaries in response to the question "How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work?" were a 5 for "Awesome" [other options are Poor, OK, Good, Great]. There are over 60,000 votes registered within these ratings thus far. ****************** Present Features- examples Just a few feature examples include: 1. Peer Comments: Ratings, Comments and Averages 2. Top 10s - by Rating and by Access 3. Extensive taxonomoy - allows filtering 4. Theming - different designs for different knowledge 10. Network member control and access 11. Complete work flow and permissions control - example access control 12. Hundreds of modules and other items of functionality 14. Video 15. USERS and USER ROLES and PROFILES 16. POLICY BLOGS 16. SCALE [see powerpoint] 17. IMPACT [see powerpoint] ************ UNDER DEVELOPMENT - COMING [SOME TIME] SOON a. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEWS PORTAL - WHYAND WHAT? *** b. ORGANIC GROUPS - WHYAND WHAT? ACCESS POWER POINT c. MAPS *********
49% had initiated an exchange and dialogue with peers prompted by a CI ‘item’
88% of that group regarded the exchange as positive for their work;
61% of the overall sample rated the CI as a 7 or better on a 10 point scale with 1 being ‘of no value and 10 being “extremely valuable”…
…with 84% rating The CI a 5 or better on that scale
- In the past 12 months, on over 900,000 occasions users have accessed the external links associated with each knowledge summary - this is the in-depth source knowledge - you have to be very interested and engaged to go that deep in The CI process.
- All trends are up - 35% growth in site use when comparing the two most recent 12 month periods; 6,000 plus new network members over past 12 months; subscribers outmatch unsubscribers by a 25 to 1 margin; an overflow of knowledge from the network to be shared causing a considerable back-log of content.
THE TWO ISSUES/OPPORTUNITIES
*********
*******