The Drum Beat 395 - Communication and Change News and Issues
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This issue of The Drum Beat features a small selection of project experiences, strategic thinking pieces, and resources highlighting the use of communication for development.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on The CI websites and in The Drum Beat newsletters, please contact Deborah Heimann [email protected]
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EXPERIENCES
1. HIV/AIDS Taxi Intervention - China
This programme attempts to reach clients of sex workers in the taxis that take them to and from an entertainment area by training the drivers in a technique that allows them to identify the clients of sex workers and then to promote condom usage to them. It draws on the typically friendly relationship between driver and passenger as part of this effort to use interpersonal communication to increase HIV/AIDS awareness and informed demand for condoms. Armed with creative HIV/AIDS print materials prominently displayed in the taxi, drivers engage passengers in a discussion of the merits of HIV/AIDS prevention. Evaluation results show that the intervention has increased HIV/AIDS knowledge and the willingness of taxi drivers to promote condoms. The percentage of drivers who knew that HIV cannot be transmitted by sharing food with someone grew from 19% to 77% over the first year of the programme.
Contact Clancy Broxton [email protected] OR [email protected]
2. Documenting Experiences of Women in Situations of Armed Conflict in Uganda - Uganda
This is a project that used audio recordings, video, photography, and face-to-face interviews to highlight women's experiences with conflict. The initiative drew on information and communication technologies (ICTs) as part of an effort to explore and highlight women's experiences in situations of armed conflict: the roles they play, the effects of violence, and how they are coping in post-conflict situations. The project objectives were to: raise awareness about the impacts of armed conflict on cultural, social, economic and political development, and particularly on women's well-being; provide stakeholders with tools that would enhance their ability to both plan for effective redress formulate laws and policies designed to reduce conflicts among the African people; engage the population in Africa (and the Great Lakes region, in particular), in discussing peace building and co-existence; create awareness about the need for accountability and redress to women's situation in post-conflict situations; and lobby for specific programmes that would address the emergency needs of women war survivors - e.g., needs related to reproductive health. The documentation process involved use of tape recorders, video recording equipment, and photography, as well as meetings, focus group discussions (FGDs), and validation workshops.
Contact [email protected]
3. Ideaccess - Middle East and Central Asia
This project aims to make human rights resources accessible to civil societies in the Middle East and Central Asia, with a particular emphasis on resources considered useful for women's rights activists and women's movements. The concept of accessibility, in this case, includes translating these resources and distributing them in print and electronic formats. The project aims to encourage the growth of a vibrant civil society in the Middle East and Central Asia, promote books and learning (especially for girls and young women), encourage critical thinking, raise awareness of universal human rights standards, and provide a forum for the exchange of information. Ideaccess distributes human rights and social justice information through a network of community-based libraries (CBLs) throughout the Middle East and Central Asia - partnering with existing organisations or libraries, as well as helping to found new CBLs. The CBLs aim to provide a place where these resources can be accessed easily at the community level, as well as provide opportunities to activists and organisations to exchange ideas, offer advice, and support each others' social justice activities. The Ideaccess website includes a database of electronic rights resources in Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Tajik, Russian, Pashto, French, and English. The e-library is organised by categories including women's rights and gender equality, law, human rights theory, and tools for skills-building.
Contact [email protected]
4. Reprolatina - Brazil
This is a youth-centred sexual and reproductive health and rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) that uses interpersonal communication, advocacy, and ICTs in an effort to build strong community support for youth health and rights in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, Brazil. In 1999, one of the organisation's adolescent health promoters decided to build a youth-friendly website to provide Brazilian adolescents with confidential access to information on sexual and reproductive health in straightforward language, as well as provide a forum where they could submit questions via email. In 2001, Reprolatina established a cadre of adolescent health promoters within the Guarda Mirim, an NGO in Santa Bárbara that trains adolescents in office skills and then places them in local companies. This project draws on the interpersonal interactions facilitated by the Guarda, which provides a place where adolescents congregate, in order to reach more young people in the community with information on health, rights, and prevention. The health promoters, called Adolescent Volunteers Instructing in Sexuality and Prevention (Adolescente Voluntarios/as Instruindo Sexualidade e Prevenção) - AVISP - serve as resources on sexual and reproductive health for their peers, conducting horizontal, peer-to-peer "bate papos informativos"("informational chats"), as well as distributing informational materials, providing individual advice, and linking adolescents with the public health system.
Contact Margarita Diaz [email protected]
5. Clean Up the World - Global
This is a community-based programme that is designed to inspire and empower individuals and communities around the world to clean up, fix up, and conserve their environment. Held in conjunction with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), this initiative mobilises over 35 million volunteers from more than 100 countries annually in a campaign that brings together businesses, community groups, schools, governments, and individuals in a range of activities to enhance and conserve their local environments - thereby helping to "clean up the world". Clean Up the World Weekend, celebrated globally on the 3rd weekend in September, is the Campaign's flagship event, and draws on community involvement in actions to raise awareness about - and to address - environmental challenges. Each annual Weekend, there is a particular theme chosen, so as to draw attention to a specific environmental issue and to lend a focus to the planned activities. For example, in 2007, Clean Up the World is encouraging and supporting its Members to take action at a local level to help address the issue of climate change.
Click here for an online contact form.
6. Young Documentary Makers' Storyboard Competition - Southern Thailand
In October 2006, the Fah Diow Foundation (or, One Sky Foundation) held a competition for video documentaries and storyboards produced by children and youth from 6 coastal provinces of Southern Thailand. Twelve student teams (and their teachers) from primary to secondary school levels submitted documentaries on the topic of "change in coastal resource use over time", as part of an effort to support local schools and encourage greater awareness of the need to manage jointly the natural resources of the coastal areas of this region. This contest-based initiative was designed to foster children's participation in local environmental issues by providing them with the skills and tools to speak with their own voices through ICTs. Organisers hope to expand this youth media initiative to coastal communities around the world, creating an annual global event of storyboard design and video documentary filming for children.
Contact Sophia Buranakul [email protected] OR [email protected]
7. Civiblog Project - Canada
Canada's Citizen Lab has developed an ICT project that involves providing "blogging" space to the individuals and organisations involved in global civil society. "Blogs" (or "weblogs") are internet-based daily journals. The Civiblog Project uses ICTs to foster interpersonal interaction and news/information exchange. It is meant to be a virtual community in which members engage with each other in an online space to support their work as practitioners in the communication for social development field.
Contact [email protected]
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SEEKING NRM INFO!
We are seeking information on communication projects, publications, evaluations, awards, and funding opportunities related to natural resource management (NRM), biodiversity, and the environment. Please send your details to Deborah Heimann [email protected]
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DISCUSSION
"Non-Material" Resources in Health and Development Communication
The Health e Communication website is hosting a discussion with Dr. Benjamin Lozare (Associate Director, Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) beginning June 4 2007.
Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel argues that inequality in the distribution of "non-material" resources such as vision of opportunity and work ethic is more severe and profound than the inequality of "material" resources. Drawing on these insights, Dr. Lozare asks whether health and development communication should focus more on the development of "non-material" and "spiritual" resources.
Join this Health e Communication discussion, as we explore the importance of "non-material" resources for development, ask why this is a neglected area, and exchange ideas about how health communicators can nurture and harness this important resource more effectively.
We hope you'll be able to join Dr. Lozare starting June 4th for this new Health e Communication discussion.
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THINKING
8. Getting Girls Out of Work and Into School: Policy Brief
by Nancy Spence
According to this policy brief published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Bangkok, in the Asia-Pacific region, girls' labour, official and unofficial, continues to constitute a major obstacle to accelerating progress towards achieving gender parity and equality in primary and secondary education by 2015. This brief summarises the causes and consequences of girls' child labour on their educational opportunities and describes some of the instruments and strategies in place to reduce girls' labour. It describes 3 initiatives designed to get girls out of work and into school in China, India, and the Philippines, setting out key actions to increase girls' participation in education. It concludes that the provision of education for girls that is accessible, affordable, of good quality, and relevant is ultimately a question of political will to adequately invest in education for girls.
9. Manufacturers' Anti-Smoking Ads Ineffective
by Maggie Fox
This November 2006 news article reviews studies that analyse advertising strategies aimed at preventing teenage smoking. It indicates that a recent report published in the American Journal of Public Health by researchers from the Cancer Council of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Michigan showed no correlation between the frequency of the tobacco industry's anti-smoking ads and actual or intended teen smoking. The conclusion was that the strategy of using teen-oriented anti-smoking advertising was having no impact; in contrast, parent-oriented ads had an adverse effect on teens.
10. Participatory Communication in Malaria Control: Why Does It Matter?
by Alison Dunn
This paper explores how community-level communication can engage the most vulnerable people - such as children under 5 years of age and women in the economically poorest communities in Africa - in strategies to prevent and treat malaria. It is based on the premise that current malaria control strategies rely predominantly on individuals and communities to take action to protect and treat themselves, such as by hanging insecticide-treated bed nets and (as is sometimes the case) impregnating them at timely intervals, often at the user's expense. Such strategies will only succeed, the author argues, if there is effective, contextual communication and genuine understanding around the causes, symptoms, and means of preventing and treating malaria. Communication approaches to malaria control that engage with local communities in participatory ways go beyond message delivery and social marketing and move toward a genuine exchange of understanding between agencies and local people as to what will work best in the local context. Dunn stresses that communication needs to be included in the process of malaria control from the initiation of activities, not as an afterthought or add-on. This means thinking strategically about communication from the planning stages through to implementation and evaluation.
11. Empowering the Poor: Information and Communications Technology for Governance and Poverty Reduction A Study of Rural Development Projects in India
by Roger Harris and Rajesh Rajora
This report offers an analysis of a research project covering 18 of India's information technology for development projects in order to understand influences that would lead to new strategies for scaling up projects in 2007. Recognising that many projects have established technology centres to help the rural poor, researchers analysed whether these projects were reaching goals of utilisation by communities to improve lives and livelihoods through better access to education, agricultural and weather-related information, health information, and markets. Following a summary of the projects, the report benchmarks them based on responses to a survey of 2,156 users as well as on stakeholder interviews. Projects were analysed and ranked by their relevance, service delivery, community participation and empowerment, equality in decision-making and benefits, sustainability, replicability, and their prospects for being scaled-up. The publication also provides background on the current state of information and communication technology development in India and its position among other Asia-Pacific nations.
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PULSE Poll
Do you agree or disagree?
Government agencies, international organisations, and donor agencies have lost sight of the power and relevance of traditional and folk media.
[For context, please see The Drum Beat #393.]
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Please participate in a DISCUSSION on the above topic through May 31 2007 within the Drum Beat Chat forum. Click here!
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MATERIALS
12. Building Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Systems for HIV/AIDS Programs
by K. Lynn McCoy, Patricia Njeri Ngari, and Edwin E. Krumpe
This workbook offers a practical introduction to monitoring, evaluation, and reporting (MER) systems. It is designed for management and staff in non-governmental HIV/AIDS programmes who need to more efficiently track and utilise their resources for enhanced effectiveness. The workbook contains chapters on the basic principles of MER, results-based MER, indicators, monitoring and reporting. It includes activities and worksheets to reinforce the lessons in each section. The manual also includes a discussion of the indicator reporting and monitoring requirements for the United States government's President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
13. Listening - To Those Working with Communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to Achieve the UN Goals for Water and Sanitation
This publication proposes that current approaches to issues of water and sanitation are flawed, and that new approaches based on the experiences of people working directly in communities are needed. The publication includes contributions from over 35 individuals working on water and sanitation issues across the world. Contributors agree to advocate for a new approach - one based on working with and trusting local communities, focusing on the needs of households, and supporting the reform of local governments and institutions. This new approach proposes that progress towards water and sanitation goals must be measured not by counting the number of taps and toilets and dividing them into the total population served, but by recording changes in use, behaviour, maintenance, and - above all - improvements in health.
14. Preparing a Case Study: A Guide for Designing and Conducting a Case Study for Evaluation Input
by Palena Neale, Shyam Thapa, and Carolyn Boyce
This guide assists people in designing and conducting a case study, defined here as a report which "gives the story behind the result by capturing what happened to bring it about..." in order "...to highlight a project's success, or to bring attention to a particular challenge or difficulty in a project." The guide includes a section on "When is a case study appropriate?" and identifies advantages and limitations, processes for conducting a case study, potential sources of information, key elements to include, and ways of presenting a case study.
15. Avian and Pandemic Influenza Communication Resources
This online resource centre for pandemic avian influenza communication resources is a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO). The website provides access to communication products, tools, and resources to help users access information on how to prevent, contain, and respond to avian flu outbreaks. Communication resources available as part of the resource centre include: creative products, source materials, planning/training documents, links, and contacts.
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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
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