Strategic Communication for Rural Development

This 128-page paper presents results of a study of communication activities within a variety of rural development projects in Central America. It intends to support understanding of the complexity of the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of strategic communication activities. The thesis of the document is: communication in rural development agencies needs to go beyond the traditional agricultural extension-type activities, i.e. technical or socio-economic advice disseminated to farmers, or the production of mass media, such as leaflets, posters, or radio programmes, once a policy or a project has entered into the implementation phase. Instead, "Strategic Communication should be an integral part of any design procedure from the very beginning. It is a comprehensive and holistic vision of the communication activities needed for designing and implementing successful policies and projects....Mainstreaming communication into rural development projects is not a tremendous task, and it does not increase costs."

The following are recommendations with excerpts from the document:

• Have a communication expert on the project formulation team. "A communication expert should be integrated into the project formulation team, in order to ensure that communication problems are approached professionally from the beginning. This person should have two main tasks: a) to ensure that communication activities are properly considered and budgeted, interacting with the other technical experts; b) to ensure that proper communication activities are implemented during the project formulation so as to ensure full and conscious participation of all likely stakeholders."
• Establish a team of communicators. "During project formulation, at least one communicator per agency should be designated as a member of the communication team, in charge of the participatory elaboration of the draft of a communication strategy."
• Complete a communication audit. "During project identification and once the project enters into implementation, the primary concern should be to identify all institutions, groups, associations, formal and informal, that will be affected by the project. All relevant civil society organizations should be involved."
• Identify likely stakeholders. "During the project identification and formulation phase, different categories of stakeholders should be consulted to empower them and design a project that meets their needs."
• Include opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge into the baseline. "Opinions and attitudes of the stakeholders are becoming part of the baseline of the projects along with indicators of health, agriculture or biodiversity. In addition, a greater volume of information exchange is expected between agencies, with the general public, and even with stakeholders based abroad."
• Set quantitative communication objectives.
• Design a strategy and programme of communication activities. "Increasingly, people in rural and urban areas want to know what is being decided, and they want to take part in the decision-making process, both at the macro-level, during identification and formulation of the policy or project, and at the micro-level, when the project is being implemented. For this reason, strategic communication also implies empowerment, because it helps to design tools for facilitating consultation with and full participation of the stakeholders."
• Specify a communication budget. "Updated information could be collected during project design, to shape a preliminary strategy and budget."
• Establish monitoring and evaluation procedures. "Monitoring and evaluation... must be planned and budgeted from the beginning or they will be almost impossible to realize....The baseline is represented by a select list of quantitative variables, which are some of the project indicators. Such a baseline is needed to assist in monitoring the project communication activities and to measure their impact in the long run."
• Pre-test all media and avoid logo confusion. "To achieve the project objectives, several communication activities are usually needed, which take into account the technical content of the messages, the educational level, information needs and communication behavior of the stakeholders. A wide variety of methods and media can be used—from the most traditional, labor-intensive field visits (agricultural extension) to radio and TV; from the most traditional media (folk theater, story tellers or puppet theater) to information technology. Attending decision-making communication events, such as village meetings or specialized workshops are common activities, but consultation through the internet is also beginning to emerge as a way to receive feedback from stakeholders."
• Ensure internal communication. "Another important aspect of strategic communication, which can also be considered a tactical tool for empowering the stakeholders who work within the agencies implementing the project, is the internal communication system. With this system, the various actors can collect, store, elaborate, organize, share, retrieve and use relevant knowledge."
• Educate for communication."In Latin America, the need for basic education and for greater participation in political decision-making led to an emphasis on the educational role of the field level staff. “Animación” and “participación” were the words often used for defining their roles. Finally, there arrived the figure of the “facilitator”, who did not teach any given truth, but rather helped the people to develop their own solutions."
• Ensure technical assistance for communication.