Footsteps

This issue of Footsteps, a quarterly newsletter for health and development workers from the British charity Tear Fund, focuses on effective communication. Articles cover topics such as working with the media, encouraging local ownership of information, writing effectively, using mobile phones, and blogging.

Articles include:

• Access to low cost technology - the case of a Kenyan with internet access through a 12-volt car battery, dial-up connection, and a laptop.
• Encouraging local ownership of information - the adaptation of a series of discussion-based learning guides using local knowledge needs in local languages.
• Sharing experience and learning together - a profile of the organisation Community Development Resource Association (CDRA), helping to develop the capacity of community-based organisations working in development and social transformation in southern and east Africa.
• Tele-secondary schools - analysing the benefits and drawbacks reported in a study of 80 communities of Tseltal, Tsotsil, and Chol indigenous peoples living in remote areas of Chiapas State, southern Mexico, and using "tele-schooling".
• Using mobile phones: Training teachers with text messages - a distance learning programme which trains teachers as they work, makes use of information technology such as video cassettes, audio cassettes, and radio broadcasts, as well as printed materials, and shows the potential of using mobile phones and SMS (text messaging) as part of the learning process.
• Working with the media - a former journalist advises on working effectively with the media.

Also included in this issue are: an editorial, a letters section, a resources section, and articles on blogging, Bible study, and effective writing.

This newsletter is available in 7 languages as a printed magazine, on CD-Rom, in an email edition or on the website. Access to the web-based HTML format is available below. The contact for requesting copies in other formats is: [email protected], or the address in the contact section below.