Conclusions and Recommendations (from Danida - Communication and Development Euro-American Donor Seminar)

Finding a Common Ground for Future Dialogue

There was a broad sense that this meeting in Copenhagen had been very useful. It brought together a broad range of communication experts, most deeply rooted and playing key roles in their respective organisations. The seminar was a cultural encounter in the sense of showing how different communication is conceived and practised. However, it also confirmed the generic values of communication, the interdisciplinary and crosscutting nature of communication, and the fundamental need to both strongly visibilize and professionalise communication as a key instrument for development. This is a need present both within donor agencies and in the developing countries they work with.

Communication can, used right, be a strong vehicle of empowerment and for articulating participation and social change. However, used differently, communication can equally be a manipulatory instrument, a tool that can be abused. Thus, critical media education within the developing countries is crucial, building professional capacity, which can enable countries to conduct research, design, monitor and evaluate their own communication interventions. In the field of health communication, Scott Ratzan from USAID suggested the establishment of Health Communication Centres, while on a broader cross-cutting level, Morten Giersing from UNICEF suggested donor coordination around communication interventions, promoting coordinated communication interventions able to stimulate debate, engagement and ultimately empower the audiences around whatever issue necessary.

Furthermore, as was mentioned by several participants, long-term engagement combined with multimedia-communication vehicles have shown to bring about the most significant outcomes. The well-known mentioned example is that of Soul City's multimedia edutainment vehicle promoting health issues, but a less exposed and more recent example is the SIDA-supported FEMINA health information campaign in Tanzania, built up around a very successful youth magazine FEMINA-HIP, but now with plans to develop with TV-programmes, photo-novel print magazines and a number of other issues. And there are many other examples of successful communication vehicles. The point is to bring them up front, to the attention of relevant donors and partner organisations.

Finally, the most important more recent development within Communication for Development, which was highlighted during this seminar, was the increasing attention given to promoting social change agendas. Substantial theoretical and methodological substantiation of this agenda remains to be developed, but there exists a gradual international recognition of the need to transcend the traditional behaviour change models focusing on individual behaviour change and increasingly give attention to the empowerment of social and cultural collectivities around key issues of development, be they health, environment or the freedom of expression.

Thus, in the light of these many different discussions, and due to the complexity of the field of communication itself, finding a consensused communication strategy amongst the participants of this seminar was beyond the scope of the seminar. The seminar has however shown that in spite of the differences in focus, priority and types of organisations present, there do exist some basic agreements and questions to be further discussed not only in the donor communities, but equally with the partners worldwide.

This led to a series of recommendations all supporting the need for a continuation and a broadening of this cross-Atlantic, cross-organisational dialogue and collaboration which was initiated around this seminar:

1. On the background of the low priority given to communication by donor agencies, a highly relevant starting point for collaboration is to assist each other in advocating for the fundamental role communication plays today and can play in development in the future.
2. Co-ordination of communication activities at a countrywide basis is a critical issue for initiatives to gain wider societal and long-lasting impacts. Until now donors have hardly been aware of what others are doing on the ground and in their policy work.
3. Exchanges of experiences can enhance the working out of strategies for implementation and the measurement of impact.
4. Warren Feek suggested that the final report of the seminar could be published in the Drum Beat and hence be the basis for an open debate on the Internet. A closed forum between the different donors on the Internet could equally create the basis for a continuous dialogue (e.g. a chat-room).
5. Increase the number and extent of joint-donor reviews, including field visits to other donor's programmes.
6. Linking up with research institutions working on communication for development and mass media issues in order to facilitate the bridging of practice and theory.
7. Tie-in academic research in joint-donor work.