The Drum Beat 312 - Communication and Change News and Issues
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PROGRAMME EXPERIENCES
1. Interactive Health Information System to Detect Japanese Encephalitis - India
A close relative of the West Nile virus, Japanese Encephalitis (JE) is a disabling and often fatal mosquito-spread disease that mostly strikes children under age 15 in Asian countries. Working in partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) is developing surveillance networks to allow district-level health officials to respond quickly to reported cases of JE and to readily identify outbreaks - even in remote areas. Voxiva, Inc. has developed a system that uses existing communications infrastructure (e.g., mobile, pay, and land-based phones) to share timely data quickly and easily. In addition to the telephone, computers are a key communication tool. Health officials may log into the system via the web and can use the system's analytic tools to evaluate trends, identify outbreaks, and deploy appropriate resources, sharing technical information and resources with fellow health workers.
Contact [email protected]
2. Biodiversity Reporting Award (BDRA) - The Andes, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Madagascar, Peru & Venezuela
BDRA is an effort to increase the quantity and quality of environmental reporting in biodiversity-rich countries. This Conservation International initiative uses an online system of judging to engage members of the media and others in a process meant to support, recognise, and stimulate excellent environmental media initiatives. In keeping with the competition's philosophy that journalists need to be acknowledged through opportunities for professional development, first-place winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to an international environmental journalist conference. An online gallery shares winners' achievements. Furthermore, the in-country award ceremonies are high-profile events that publicly highlight not only the work of the journalists, but also the commitment of the media outlets.
Contact Mariola Montequín [email protected]
3. Creativity of Estonian Children - Estonia
Estonia's Development Center EHO is engaged in a communication-centred programme to enhance the creative development of Estonian and Russian children (ages 3-10) and to attend to the problems of those with special educational needs. Intercultural activity groups and efforts to bolster practical, social, and educational skills are among the project's approaches. By reaching out to at-risk young children, exposing them to their own creativity and introducing them to different cultures and places, this project strives to prevent destructive behaviour later in life. For example, group theatre is used to inspire children to communicate with each other in new ways, in the hope that "When Estonian and Russian children play together the language barrier disappears and they understand each other."
Contact Tatjana Ehatamm Tel.: +372 6797912
4. Radio La Benevolencija (RLB) - Rwanda
RLB is a Rwandan reconciliation radio station that produces programmes that give insight into the steps that might lead to genocide, that promote trauma-healing methods, and that are designed to lead to reconciliation and the prevention of violence. The objective of the project is to convey themes and messages in both entertaining and educational (E&E) radio programmes and through grassroots activities including poetry, music, oral history testimony, and public debate programmes. The Rwandan RLB hopes to use communication to heal the psychological and social damage incurred by the 1994 genocide.
Contact Johan Deflander [email protected]
5. Balkan Human Rights and Media Development Programme - The Balkans
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) runs a training programme that is designed to support long-term democracy and conflict resolution in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. The programme involves regional research, reporting and dialogue projects, local syndication, on-the-job training, and institution-building with local media, media institutes and journalism faculties. The goal is to support regional and European integration by improving the professionalism and responsibility of the media in the region; supporting journalists, editors and media organisations; and strengthening relationships with human rights activists and other democratic voices.
Contact Gordana Igric [email protected]
6. Strong Women for Strong Women Campaign - New Zealand & Global
Launched in July 2004 by UNICEF New Zealand (NZ), this 3-year fundraising and advocacy campaign is designed to address the gender discrimination and adverse cultural practices that girls and women experience in the developing world. Using multimedia events, Strong Women for Strong Women highlights 3 issues impacting girls: child protection (from abuse, labour, trafficking, and female genital mutilation, or FGM), gender parity in education, and HIV/AIDS. As part of the campaign's "Season for Strong Women", 5 NZ Drama School graduates performed solos - many of them sharing their own personal stories - at a local community theatre. The development of intercultural understanding through educational travel projects is another focus. The campaign aims "to communicate the message that not all women are lucky enough to have had 'support mechanisms' in their lives and that advantaged NZ women (and men!) should support their disadvantaged 'sisters', both overseas and in NZ."
Contact Philippa Day [email protected]
7. Global Citizens - Scotland
In association with UNICEF in Scotland, the TAG Theatre Company has developed a programme of workshops for children ages 8 to 11 on issues surrounding global citizenship. Children participate in 8 weeks of drama activities and role-play that urge them to work together to create an 'ideal community'. The development of a toolkit of techniques for teachers is a strategy for ensuring the sustainability of the project. The purpose of the initiative is to give students the interpersonal tools to work together to explore human rights and responsibilities, ethical enterprise, and society on a global scale - hopefully in the process motivating Scotland's children to grow into engaged and aware global citizens.
Contact [email protected]
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Please participate in a Pulse Poll!
Agreeing on "best" practices is an important step for improving the effectiveness of development interventions.
[For context, please see The Drum Beat 310]
Do you agree or disagree?
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PLANNING MODELS
8. Relationship Between Strategy Development and Evaluation
"This model requires evaluator involvement in the initiative from its beginning as part of the core strategy development team. It also requires that evaluators and the evaluation be flexible and be predictive of, and responsive to, the initiative and community's needs. This approach fits well with the complex nature of most community-based initiatives, which typically evolve over time with no set script."
9. Sustainability Focus: Ways to Incorporate into Strategy
"Initiative stakeholders and evaluators together can support sustainability by making sure the types of questions and decisions in [this] table...are raised and addressed in a systematic way. For example, sustainability should be considered when determining what gets funded, how long to provide funding, which organizations are selected to participate, and what structures and supports are needed to support that sustainability."
10. Most Significant Change (MSC) Technique
This technique "is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation....Essentially, the process involves the collection of significant change (SC) stories emanating from the field level, and the systematic selection of the most significant of these stories by panels of designated stakeholders or staff....Once changes have been captured, various people sit down together, read the stories aloud and have regular and often in-depth discussions about the value of these reported changes."
11. Dynamic Facilitation
In Dynamic Facilitation, rather than seeking to manage change, the facilitator elicits, sustains, and enhances the self-organising dynamic of change. He or she helps people to figure out what they want and to get it themselves. The Dynamic Facilitator works more completely with self-organising change than the traditional facilitator.
12. Involving Local Individuals and Groups
This chapter of the book "Mobilizing Local Resources to Support Health Programs" addresses planning for the involvement of the community within project activities. It outlines suggested ways to involve community members, motivational approaches to such involvement, and considerations that will affect strategies chosen.
13. EvaluLEAD Framework
This framework "is to be used as a lens through which evaluation for leadership development programmes can be conceptualised. It is labeled a framework, as opposed to a 'model' to connote flexible, yet organised, application. One single prescriptive model for making evaluation operational across multiple programmes is impossible....Therefore, the framework serves as a view of programmes from the perspective of a 'higher altitude.'" EvaluLEAD "conceptually outlines two types of evaluation approaches (Evident Approaches and Evocative Approaches) based on the particular kind of impact sought, making the critical point that both types are needed at all times."
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Seeking Local Organisation to Host CreativeChange Traveling Youth Arts Exhibition Highlighting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
As the Millennium +5 Summit draws near, Arts For Global Development, Inc., TakingITGlobal (TIG), and United Nations Millennium Campaign are together organising a traveling arts exhibition that showcases selected youth artwork submitted via the online 'Vision 2015: Your Future' Youth Arts Contest. These young artists' photographs, paintings, mixed-media, poetry, short essays, and digiarts are drawn from and highlight developmental issues such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, women's empowerment, education, and environment/water.
The exhibition, which will feature a multimedia video, sounds project, and multi-language MDG texts displayed on panels, is designed to generate awareness on the MDGs, as well as to recognise and encourage the role of active, creative young individuals worldwide in effecting social change.
Interested organisations from any country are invited to collaborate in hosting the exhibition.
Click here for more information.
Contact [email protected] by August 29 2005.
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MATERIALS
14. Child Protection Policies & Procedures Toolkit: How to Create a Child-Safe Organisation
This toolkit includes: information and guidelines on the recommended principles and steps involved in developing organisational child protection policies and procedures; a set of exercises which are designed to help users understand and work through the steps described; and guidance notes for facilitators to enable the material contained within the toolkit to be adapted into a training course.
15. NGO-in-a-box
NGO-in-a-box is a physical box of CDs consisting of a complimentary set of peer-reviewed and selected Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) solutions tailored to the needs of not-for-profit, non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In order to keep the product current and adapt to changing and regional user needs, the Tactical Technology Collective recommends establishing "a community of regional point people" to review use and make recommendations on how to adapt the box to suit the needs of their users.
16. Measuring Empowerment: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives
This book explores aspects of empowerment and its relationship to poverty reduction by outlining a conceptual framework that can be used to monitor and evaluate programmes centered on empowerment approaches. It presents the perspectives of 27 researchers and practitioners in economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and demography, all of whom are grappling in different ways with the challenge of measuring empowerment.
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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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