The Drum Beat 139 - Communication and Change News and Issues

PROGRAMMES

1. Programa de Comunicación en Salud Infantil - Honduras - works through a radio soap opera to target mothers with low income levels in rural and peri-urban areas with messages about how to improve their children's health and nutrition. Printed materials include: posters and orientation cards that provide guidance and reinforcement; take-home reminder materials for health workers and monitoras to give to mothers; informational brochures on the key behaviors for health workers, religious leaders, and maquila (factory) managers and health personnel; and, advocacy tools.
Contact Victoria de Alvarado [email protected]

2. Condoms4Life - USA, Europe, Africa, Latin America, South East Asia - Catholics for a Free Choice launched a global campaign challenging the Catholic Church's ban on the use of condoms. The campaign began on Nov 30, 2001 in Washington DC with advocacy advertising on bus shelters and in subways and newspapers. In Jan 2002, the campaign was expanded to specific areas of Europe, Sothern Africa, Latin America and South East Asia. This campaign is aimed at Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The general public is invited to join the global campaign at the Condoms4Life website.
Contact Catholics for a Free Choice (202) 986-6093

3. iEARN's Child Soldier Project - Sierra Leone - uses the internet to expose human rights abuses associated with child warfare, and to advocate for the cessation of the practice. The website also works to facilitate collaboration across continents, and to make connections between children who could previously only read about war in the abstract (in textbooks) and those in their age group who have directly suffered the impact of war. At the same time, ex-child combatants can relate to other youth around the globe, identifying with their peers and hopefully, realizing that they are not alone.
Contact Andrew Benson Greene Jr. [email protected] OR Bill Belsey [email protected] or [email protected]

4. Solidarity of the Common People (SORAK) - Indonesia - is an effort to unite 12 separate occupational groups of urban poor. Its purpose is to help support and give a voice to becak drivers, pushcart sellers, market wagon pushers, and urban farmers. One representative from each of these occupational groups is elected to SORAK, and routine meetings and discussions are held. The representatives act as mediators between policy makers and the grassroots organisations SORAK represents. Contact [email protected]

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PULSE - it takes 30 seconds.

"The people most directly affected by a development issue have the best ideas, analysis and opinions about how to address that issue."

Do you agree? Disagree? Are you unsure?
Recent poll results:

- The results from the U.N. Conference on Development Financing [which concluded last week in Monterey, Mexico] will mean significant economic and social improvements in the world's poorest countries. -

As of April 11: Total number of participants = 31

Agree: 12.90% "I agree with it but always with an 'if'. Funds are a necessary condition, but never a sufficient condition. The approach will have to be holistic, otherwise we can always be one more project which has funds but does not know how to use them meaningfully." [India]

Disagree: 54.84% "Many conferences, little effect." [Senegal]

Unsure: 32.26% "I am not so sure, because for the last years donations have been sent to our countries here in Afica, still the local poeple don't benefit from these donations. What will change, the money to come and be shared among the big politicians, who think they are the right people to benefit." [Kenya]

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5. Taru - India - this 52-episode radio soap opera targets rural men and women with messages on sexual and reproductive health, family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, the value of the girl-child, education, literacy, and other health and social issues. This is a collaborative effort of an international NGO working with in-country partners to promote sexual and reproductive health and sustainable development through entertainment-education, a regional NGO providing reproductive health care, the Indian national radio network, and a US university where researchers will design and conduct independent monitoring and evaluation of the programme. Contact Lillian Chege [email protected]

6. THIRSTY - Global - a dance/theatre spectacle that raises questions about the privatisation of water sources and the systems that treat and deliver drinking water. It asks: Should water be a basic human right, or a commodity to be owned and sold? Who should control it? To whose benefit? Following every performance, "Act II" invites audience discussion and focus on solutions and community action.
Contact [email protected]

7. SAfAIDS Media Information Pack - Southern Africa - produced on a quarterly basis in English and Portuguese, the packs include: fact sheets, feature stories written by journalists in the region, a glossary of frequently used terms and suggestions for appropriate language, story ideas that editors might consider assigning or journalists might investigate, and a list of links and resources. The production process is participatory and involves media professionals from throughout the region. Contact Tendayi Kureya [email protected]

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NEW Commentary

Gender Programming in Post-Taliban Afghanistan: The UN-Revolution Carolyn D Williams looks at the complex issues faced by those seeking the development of more equal but still genuinely Afghani relationships between men and women.

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WEB SITES

8. Changemakers.net - now includes a Business-Social Bridge News Box that carries information on cross-fertilization between the business and social sectors.

9. AFRO-NETS - the home page for the electronic discussion group on African Networks for Health Research and Development, contains news and events, links, and documents that are related to the discussions taking place on AFRO-NETS.

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MATERIALS

10. Women, Men and Environmental Change: The Gender Dimensions of Environmental Policies & Programs, by Justine Sass - highlights how gender differences play a part in natural resource use, how resource depletion affects women and men differently, and what has been done worldwide to integrate gender concerns in environmental planning.

11. Telecenters and ICT for Development: Critical Perspectives and Visions for the Future, edited by Royal Colle - a special issue of The Journal of Development Communication. Articles cover issues from financial sustainability to gender and research and policy. Includes field reports from South Africa, South India, Hungary, Egypt, Brazil, and Australia.

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In The Drum Beat 136 we linked to an article by Sean Hawkey of WACC that provided a critique of Wind up and Solar radios. Rory Stear, Chairman and CEO of the Freeplay Energy Group, who manufacture and market wind up radios, has placed a rebuttal to this critique on their site. It includes: "...Many tens of thousands of Freeplay radios using the original steel spring mechanism to store and deliver human energy have been delivered into developing countries. These radios provide real utility and performance to families and communities who otherwise would not have sustainable access to listening...Freeplay radios continue to perform year after year under the most harsh environmental conditions." Full article is on the Freeplay website Contact for Freeplay: Debby Scheepers [email protected]

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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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