The Drum Beat 495 - The Power of Praise
- Recognition to spark PARTICIPATION.
- COMPETITION to motivate and reinforce.
- WEIGH IN: Your view on newspapers and democracy.
- PRIZES for AIDS communication.
- Spotlighting CHAMPIONS.
Even the casual observer of human relationships may recognise that encouraging words - those that embrace someone's efforts, reinforce a good behaviour, instil a sense of pride - can be strong motivation. When we do something meaningful and others take note, there is a sense of validation that can have inherent value, no matter the "prize". This issue of the Drum Beat features initiatives and resources whose core communication strategy is recognising and rewarding shifts or successes that are indicative of positive social change. It also highlights a few programmes that champion innovative ideas - awards that consist in not just money for its own sake, but in support meant to "seed" sustainable change.
NOURISHING COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
1. Philippine National Population and Family Planning Outreach Project (NPFPOP) - Philippines
As part of this project, volunteer workers were called the Barangay Service Point Officers (BSPOs) and were given basic motivation training for family planning (FP). They did not receive any compensation; rather, they received T-shirts, umbrellas, and caps with the BSPO and FP logos, and, in some areas, transportation money. Each year during Population Week, "Outstanding BSPOs" were celebrated. "Studies tend to show that these breed of workers were highly motivated and that they chose to perform the role as community catalysts for development because of the intangible benefits they give to the community and they get from the community. For them, being part of the program was a badge of honor. Indeed, there were manifestations that they acquired a level of status where they became gatekeepers of the community. There are documented reports that some of the BSPOs...[were] elected into office....The contraceptive prevalence rates shot up....[T]here are still BSPOs in the field (after 30 years)....I can attribute this experience to the training that the Population officers and the BSPOs got in the program that was heavy on group dynamics and motivation processes more than the technical aspects of the program, the selection process conducted by the Population officers, and the intangible 'rewards' the BSPOs and the Population officers got from the community. Other programs where there are heavy 'material' inputs (e.g., salaries, supplies, training), the desire to stay dwindles when these inputs are removed."
Contact: Jose Miguel R. de la Rosa mikepccp@mozcom.com
2. Partnering to Address HIV/AIDS: Bangladesh
As part of this effort to ensure the right to HIV/AIDS education and health care services, CARE-Bangladesh designed and implemented a behavioural change initiative designed to reach out to transport workers, especially truckers. During the project's initial period, CARE-Bangladesh staff worked to develop a trusting relationship with union leaders by engaging in discussion, advocacy, and the sharing of information. Peers - transport workers themselves - helped identify areas for outreach, ensured cultural appropriateness of the prevention message, and served as outreach workers. As the partnership grew, the union and its leaders contributed to and took responsibility for programme activities. "Union leaders give time and moral support during the opening and graduation ceremonies of the Volunteer Peer Educator training course. Peer educators are motivated to participate more actively in the training process after they hear a union leader praise their role and contribution; receiving a certificate from their union leader also bestows a sense of prestige."
Contact: Syed Asif Altaf Chowdhury saa01bd@yahoo.com
3. Taking Community Empowerment to Scale: Lessons from Three Successful Experiences
by Gail Snetro-Plewman, Marcela Tapia, Valerie Uccellani, Angela Brasington, and Maureen McNulty
The Madagascar Child Survival and Reproductive Health Program promoted a package of achievable goals - reaching 80% vaccination for infants under 12 months, achieving 65% use of child health cards for those less than 3 years, or completing 10 family planning promotion sessions. Communities could choose a goal that responded to their particular need. "By establishing a starting point and a finish line with do-able activities, communities witnessed results and were motivated to sustain active participation and augment their efforts." Achievement was celebrated. For example, children completing their vaccinations before their first birthday received a vaccination diploma that families proudly displayed. When 80% of the community received a diploma, the programme would help organise a festival to celebrate. Responsibility and decision making was given to existing community organisations; some successful communities, "Champion Communities", moved to a higher level of organisation, often with local animators and community leaders as the driving force.
4. Community-Based Disaster Preparedness Project - Haiti
In 2004, community members in urban settlements within the Northern Haiti town of Cap Haitian designed and implemented information campaigns to foster improved disaster preparation and mitigation for 22 high-risk urban settlements. In order to build community capacity to enhance the safety of the population at risk, Oxfam GB worked to optimise local knowledge and local resources, as well as to mobilise the creative and innovative energies of local actors (including local artists) and local traditions. This approach to communication and public awareness allowed 22 newly created Local Civil Protection Committees (LCPCs) to design and implement their own information campaigns for their communities - most of which featured festive event/community assemblies and/or billboards. To motivate the LCPCs' commitment to developing good-quality campaigns, an incentive was awarded to the best campaign - in the form of cash toward a community disaster fund.
Contact: Kristie van de Wetering kvwetering@oxfam.org.uk
5. Giving Challenge - United States, Global
In the spirit of the 2007 holiday gift giving season in the United States, the Case Foundation awarded US$750,000 to those individuals and nonprofits that mobilised the most people to give US$10 or more to their cause through online technologies. The purpose was to highlight the potential of online philanthropy while "democratising" charitable giving by encouraging even very small donations, from people of all incomes. Visitors to a dedicated section of the Case Foundation website could learn how to participate - taking advantage of everyday activities like emailing, blogging, and social networking to advocate on behalf of a cause they care about. Nonprofit partners were provided with a variety of communications materials, such as an electronic postcard, banner advertising, and text for inclusion in the organisation's own newsletter, website, or e-blast. In the end, the citizen philanthropists encouraged more than 80,000 people to make donations to nearly 700 nonprofits, and raised more than US$2.5 million (which includes the US$750,000 contributed by the Case Foundation) for the nonprofits represented.
Contact: Allyson Burns allysonb@casefoundation.org
Created by India-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the GREEN Olympiad is a school-based initiative designed to test students' environmental knowledge while orienting them to environmental stewardship. The effort to move participants through a transformative learning process - from knowledge, to awareness, to action - centres around a competitive quest. Participating students sit for an objective-type examination each September; winners receive awards and recognition for their performance. In addition, 64 students from the top 32 schools are invited to participate in a multi-episode environment quiz programme for television. Telecast on Doordarshan's national network, the 13-episode TERRAQUIZ is interactive, with the rounds designed along the lines of a game show. A popular television personality anchors the show each year. The members of the winning team are crowned the "Hero Honda Green Ambassadors" for one year. This title confers on the winners a responsibility to undertake initiatives to spread awareness about environmental issues among students. The winners and runners-up of the first televised series (in 1999) were awarded study trips by the President of India.
Contact: Livleen Kahlon go@teri.res.in OR kahlonl@teri.res.in OR mailbox@teri.res.in
7. Best Practices in Youth Policies and Programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean
Coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the IDB YOUTH Program of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), this is an initiative to identify, disseminate, and transfer best practices in youth policies and programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean region. An evaluation committee made up of groups of specialists will identify "best" practices in the following fields: education, employment, sexual and reproductive health, prevention of youth violence, poverty reduction, volunteer work, youth participation and leadership, and integral youth development (intersectoral approach). The representatives of the selected practices will be invited to an international meeting (all expenses paid), which will take place in Mexico, in September 2009. During the event, the selected youth will be officially recognised, and receive a prize designed to reinforce the practice. In addition to giving visibility to the projects and developing a regional exchange within an analytical framework, the meeting will promote the inclusion of young people in the socioeconomic development of their respective countries. The practices chosen after the first stage of selection will be published on the project's website. They will also be widely disseminated among the institutions that make up the evaluation committee. Among those, a smaller number of practices will also be published in a book.
Contact: Berenice Alcalde b.alcalde@unesco.org OR Isabel Álvarez-Rodríguez isabela@iadb.org
This is a community- and university-supported, school-based, collaborative programme designed to both improve oral health among children in a remote First Nations community in Canada and to provide educational opportunities for paediatric trainees. Face-to-face information sharing and the use of awards/recognition as a reinforcement strategy were key elements of the school-based work, which centred around daily school-based brush-ins after lunch each day, supervised by teachers and/or the community health director. Teachers award prizes weekly, monthly, and annually for participation, and the school maintains a wall of photographs of children who are cavity-free as a measure of their success.
Contact: Andrew J. Macnab amacnab@telus.net OR Faith Gagnon faith.gagnon@telus.net
9. Olympiads for Change (O-Change) - Global
On the cusp of the Olympic Games (Beijing, China) in August 2008, Bridge Initiative International launched a global ICT-driven process designed to engage youth and others in balancing out the power of globalisation through participating, listening, cooperating, and transforming relationships. O-Change's starting point is the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which it is using as a framework to bring individuals together in a "world games" meant to promote cultural diversity and collective creativity through symbolic competitions. A virtual platform is designed to foster a shared process of civic engagement which will, as the initiative develops, also be reflected in an online game focusing on the 30 Articles, as well as a space where media professionals, athletes, and artists can contribute the work they are doing to raise awareness. Using this internet process as a springboard, teams will form to compete in 5 disciplines through which they will illustrate, give life to, and - possibly - adapt the Articles into a document of global citizenship that represents the duties, responsibilities, and rights of each person. The resulting new framework will be communicated in celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Contact: Patrice Barrat patrice.barrat@bridge-initiative.org OR contact@bridge-initiative.org
See Also: ThinkQuest Uganda - Uganda
Please VOTE in our current POLL:
How central to democracy are newspapers - some of which are being lost to budget cuts and other changes - as opposed to blogs, YouTube, emails, text messaging, twittering, and the like?
- Pivotal - informed public debate is impossible without this kind of quality platform and trained journalistic practice.
- Of some importance - we need both traditional newspapers and new media voices/venues to sustain conversations conducive to transparency.
- Unimportant - the internet and other technologies have enabled participation on the part of both citizens and journalists by trade, making open journalistic debate both possible and popular. This is the essence of democracy.
VOTE and COMMENT click here.
RESULTS thus far (June 5):
48%: Pivotal - informed public debate is impossible without this kind of quality platform and trained journalistic practice.
35%: Of some importance - we need both traditional newspapers and new media voices/venues to sustain conversations conducive to transparency.
17%: Unimportant - the internet and other technologies have enabled participation on the part of both citizens and journalists by trade, making open journalistic debate both possible and popular. This is the essence of democracy.
PRIZES TO FOSTER AIDS COMMUNICATION
10. Scenarios from Africa - Africa
This community mobilisation, education, and media project is designed to give children and young adults an opportunity to educate themselves and others about HIV/AIDS by inviting them to participate in a contest involving the production of short fiction films. Open to individuals or teams of young Africans under the age of 25, the contest invites submissions in the form of an original idea for a short film related to HIV/AIDS. The proposals are examined by juries made up young people; specialists in HIV prevention, treatment and care; people living with HIV; and experts in film production. Each winner receives a prize of US$75, as well as the chance to have the finished film, which will be between 2 and 9 minutes long, produced and broadcast on television and on the Web. In addition, one of the international contest winners or winning teams is awarded US$1,000. The adapted script is then pre-tested with the help of community-based organisations and support groups of people living with HIV. Then, internationally acclaimed filmmakers from the region, working in tandem with African producers, direct teams made up of African actors and technicians to create the films. Wherever possible, the young author will play a central role in the entire process.
Contact: scenariosafrica@hotmail.com OR Coleen Mcglaughlin info@globaldialogues.org
11. Romanian Family Health Initiative (RFHI): HIV and AIDS Component
Ensuring that young people who have been infected and/or affected by HIV and AIDS is a core RFHI emphasis. Working with the National Union of NGOs Working with PLWHA (UNOPA) and JSI Research & Training Institute, RFHI organised two anti-discrimination photo contests: The World Seen Through my Eyes (2006) and A Day in my Life (2007). An 18-year-old HIV-positive man won the 2006 contest, which provided him with the equipment, training, and support to create a series of 20 3- to 5-minute video spots that deliver HIV and AIDS antidiscrimination messages. Each of the spots, which aired on a national youth television station, is followed by a brief statement from a Romanian personality popular with youth, such as pop stars and music television video jockeys (VJs). His approach to encouraging change involves "coax[ing] viewers to imagine HIV-positive individuals' lives woven with vitality and hope. At the same time, he also communicates the sadness and loneliness that result from discrimination." His goal is to change something about how Romanians - and youth in particular - interact with HIV-positive individuals.
Contact: jsinfo@jsi.com
12. FXB India Suraksha Activities for World AIDS Orphans Day - India
Each year on the occasion of World AIDS Orphan Day (May 7), FXB India Suraksha uses communication as a core strategy in mobilising children, youth, civil society members, and prominent dignitaries from different walks of life to observe the day. The organisation draws upon various public events (e.g., rallies), educational tools (e.g., a poster campaign and writing contest), and mass media to raise awareness and spark action. For example, a drawing competition rally was designed to lure attention as part of a public meeting and interactive session involving 10 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) and 10 volunteers. In collaboration with S.K. Pottekkad Cultural Centre, FXB organised a drawing competition with the theme of "AIDS orphaned childhood". Fifty children participated. To cite another example, a speech, essay, and painting competition was held at a high school in Bihar; approximately 500 students participated. As part of the 2008 celebration, an intra-school essay competition was held on the topic of AIDS and children's rights for students from grades 9-12.
Contact: Manisha Pal manishafxb@gmail.com OR mpal@fxbsuraksha.org
See Also:
Jo Bola Wohi Sikander - HIV and AIDS Campaign - India
13. India: Ganjam's Prejudice Turns to Pride
by Manipadma Jena
This piece looks at emerging positive changes among HIV-positive women in the high-migration Ganjam district of Orissa in India. Author Manipadma Jena celebrates the fact that HIV-positive widows are declaring their positive status and helping in campaigns and among collectives to spread awareness about the epidemic. For example, Koma Mohanty, 35, "is on the brink becoming a full-blown AIDS case. Yet...she is the perfect example of courage..." After her husband died from the disease, her eldest son killed himself after having been hounded by villagers for supposedly carrying the virus. At school, her other 2 children were isolated and later had to drop out. Health workers "would keep her waiting for hours, refusing to attend to an HIV-positive patient. Broken in mind and body, Koma, too, contemplated ending her life and also that of her two remaining children." According to Jena, it was the activism of one individual - Krushna Chandra Das, the school headmaster and also Koma's neighbour - that was central in Koma's case in turning the tide of public perception. In an effort to condition the community to accept her and her children, Das called a special parent meeting at the school and asked Koma to light the ceremonial inauguration lamp. Teachers and parents protested, but Das persisted; in 2 months time, Koma's children rejoined school. Thus empowered, Koma today leads HIV/AIDS awareness rallies in neighbouring villages and schools and speaks at the meetings of self-help groups (SHGs), where she focuses on the wives of migrant workers. Jena suggests that members of these groups "are finding a sense of self worth in information sharing..."
14. Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED): Ideas Worth Spreading - United States
This initiative started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design. Since then its scope has extended to include the TED Prize, which is designed to leverage the TED community's array of talent and resources. It is awarded annually to 3 exceptional individuals who each receive US$100,000 and the granting of "One Wish to Change the World." After several months of preparation, they unveil their wish at an award ceremony held during the TED Conference. According to organisers, "[t]hese wishes have led to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact." TED is owned by The Sapling Foundation, whose goal is to "provide a platform for the world's smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries and most-inspiring teachers, so that millions of people can gain a better understanding of the biggest issues faced by the world, and a desire to help create a better future."In the past, Sapling has supported projects that use these tools to leverage every dollar spent and create sustainable change in areas such as global public health, poverty alleviation, and biodiversity.
Contact: See website
The station was officially dedicated in February 2007, and the presence of various dignitaries at the grand opening was a strategic decision to communicate the importance of this new independent radio presence in Jordan. Selected students conducted an interview with 2 of these dignitaries, which was broadcast live. At a ceremony conducted in front of the radio station, an award was presented to the Queen's representative to honour the support that the Queen has provided to youth and media development in the Kingdom of Jordan. At the end of the ceremony, a plaque marking the official opening of YFM, under the dedication of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdallah, was unveiled in front of the radio station. This strategy of recognising dedication through the provision of awards is also reflected in a ceremony in August 2007 at which Internews honoured 10 outstanding students at YFM for their contributions to the station's growing impact. The students received cash awards in recognition of their commitment and high-quality work. One award recipient comes to the station every morning, even during the summer holidays. In part due to this enthusiasm, since July 15 2007, YFM has been broadcasting 24 hours a day.
Contact: Nadia Alami nalami@internews.org OR info@internewsmena.org
16. World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse - Global
Created in 2000 and commemorated every November 19 (in synergy with the Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child), the World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse is an annual global awareness campaign to create a culture of prevention of child abuse. An international coalition was launched in 2001 with the aim of increasing existing programmes and developing new prevention measures. The coalition, headed by the Women's World Summit Foundation (WWSF), unites over 930 governmental and non-governmental organisations in more than 135 countries, all of which now mark November 19 with local and national activities and events. Each year, the WWSF reviews coalition members' activity reports from the field as they mark the World Day; they select 4 for innovative prevention activities in the field of prevention of child abuse. The aim is to encourage continued efforts by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to develop effective prevention measures and to catalyse new energies.
Contact: wdpca@wwsf.ch OR wwsf@wwsf.ch
See Also:
Ten Million Hero Book Project (10MhbP) - South Africa
National Awards for Good Governance in Medicines - Philippines
This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.
The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to The CI's Editorial Director - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
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