Communication for Development

Good morning community members! 

Looking forward to kick off the timely and timeless discussion on communication for development this week. It would be great to hear your opinion on the above questions. Of course, we'd be happy to compile questions for the speakers of the upcoming webinars here. 

Thank you!

Flyer Webinar 3 ODA Learning Series.pdf391.72 KB

Hello, on top of the list, I have one more question to our speakers:

How to make development subjects interesting for general public and what do readers really want to read about? Do you have any practical tips, from your own experience?

Thank you!

Hello, I also have some additional questions - Could we discuss also how to define the target group for the communication? E.g. we could provide general information for the public at home, but what about the specific communication toward the experts' groups or specific international communities dealing with specific development topics? How the communication could support profiling the country between other donors? What tools we could use for this/the most effective tools?

Thank you for these great questions! 

We'll raise some of them for tomorrow's speakers and participants and others for the coming weeks, as the next week's webinar will address communicating to specific target groups; and the webinar in two weeks will cover certain tools. 

Any other questions? Or perhaps answers :)

Hello everyone! I want to elaborate on the first question posed for this theme, i.e. secret ingredients of an effective communication for development. For national development priorities, it is easier since development work directly impacts people's lives. On the other hand, communicating to the domestic audience on ODA is more difficult, and needs to take into account the priorities and perceptions of the public. There is a never ending discussion among citizens/tax payers on focusing on the issues of others while the domestic development challenges continue to exist (see the latest discussions on international cooperation around COVID response!). My experience shows that it is extremely context specific, and dependent on the priorities of the public (e.g. universal values or brotherhood/historical ties) as well as how open the society is. There is a study exactly on this topic, commissioned by UNDP China, 'Communicating Development Cooperation to Domestic Audience' which makes a comparison of a number of countries doing SSC. https://www.cn.undp.org/content/china/en/home/library/south-south-cooperation/communicating-development-cooperation-to-domestic-audiences.html. The report presents 5 steps to take into account: 

-Be clear about the goals

-Understand the audience

-Support an external orientation within the population

-Target the communication

-Review and revise

I agree with the general findings of the report, which mentions that design of the messages for the audience should go hand in hand with awareness raising and education. This is a long way ahead for most of our countries. I look forward to the webinar tomorrow and the upcoming weeks, as well as the discussions here!   

Hello, I have a very practical question here - which of the devices and apps do you recommend to use for preparation - or even monitoring - of the media outcomes? Thank you!

Dear participants,

Thank you for participating in today’s webinar on Communication for Development. Please find all the resources shared today from below.

• The UN75 Survey and Dialogues with preliminary results: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/un75_update_report_april_2020_final.pdf
• (Re-)Branding Development Co-operation – OECD DevCom discussion notes: https://www.oecd.org/dev/pgd/Re_BrandingDevelopmentCooperation_DevCom_DiscussionNote_June2020.pdf
• Research report by David Klimeš: How to Communicate Official Development Assistance? – The Czech Republic Case: https://undp.cz/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Communication_Report.pdf
• A guide to hope-based communication: https://www.openglobalrights.org/hope-guide/
• Stories and advice to engage citizens for Sustainable Development: https://sdg-communicator.org/

We will share the recording of the webinar shortly.

Good morning dear community members! 

Only two more days to go until our next webinar on Communications for Development. Please have a look at the attached flyer of the webinar and share here if you have any questions to the speakers or to your peers.

Thank you and wish you a great day!

Flyer webinar 4 ODA series.pdf414.64 KB

The second webinar on communications for development starting soon! 

Join us for experts' insights and practitioner's experiences on communication strategies and useful tips and tricks.

Dear participants,

Thank you for participating in today’s webinar on Communication for Development. Please find all the resources shared today from below.

• Two innovative Norad campaigns to engage citizens for sustainable development: https://sdg-communicator.org/tag/norway/
• What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming by Per Espen Stoknes – a book that inspired Marte and her team, on their more positive and constructive climate change campaign: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/what-we-think-about-when-we-try-not-to-think-about-global-warming/
• Here is some partnering advice from OECD DevCom members: https://sdg-communicator.org/2020/08/31/event-summary-partnering-in-public-engagement/

We will share the recording of the webinar shortly.

Dear community,

You can find the recording of yesterday's webinar from here: https://youtu.be/E0ISJ9Ouvmg

Have a great weekend everyone!

Hello, I am very much looking forward to the next comms webinar. I was trying to dive into the topic; however I did not find any good website with C4D content with up-to-date examples. Could you please suggest a good platform, which could serve as a good base for the development practitioners?

Hi Eva,

The Toolkit section of the SDG Communicator website mentioned by Felix during his presentation provides a good platform with useful examples: https://sdg-communicator.org/toolkit/ 

Also, regarding the question I asked on communicating with Parliamentarians, Felix sent me a good resource abstracted from the 2019 OECD DevCom Annual Meeting. I reproduce this section below:

Engaging with Parliamentarians on Development for Accountability
In this joint session with the OECD DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet), participants agreed that there is a growing need to communicate with parliamentarians. In times of budget pressure, parliamentarians need to know that public funds are put to good use. Parliamentarians are also well placed to deliver messages about sustainable development to the local level – i.e. their constituencies.
Participants shared experiences in engaging with parliaments. As a first step, most development ministries/agencies comply with formal reporting procedures, for example by presenting reports to parliamentary committees or responding to parliamentary questions. Some members have begun to innovate by publishing shorter, more engaging documents, interactive digital reports and online portals.
Some development organisations also adopt informal approaches to engage parliamentarians in their work. This can include regular seminars, workshops and informal briefings, or even field visits to partner countries. For some, it means adopting specific communication tools, like tailored newsletters or podcasts.
Participants shared advice on success factors in engaging with parliamentarians:
1. Aim for long-term relationships beyond political cycles and across political party lines.
2. Focus on two-way relationships: by listening to parliamentarians and understanding their electoral constituencies, we can tailor our communications to their needs.
3. Go to where parliamentarians are, e.g. the newsletters they read; the podcasts they listen to.
4. Use specific, relatable examples to explain development work.
5. Be truthful and authentic. This means being honest about negative results, showing how you are responding to them, and having a strategy to anticipate when critics “cherry-pick” bad results.
The joint session was an opportunity for DevCom and EvalNet members to meet informally and discuss (a) how communicators can evaluate their strategies and (b) how evaluators can improve their communications. Participants agreed that both networks could collaborate again in the future.

Hi Sidney, many thanks for the refresh on the platform shared by Felix. I really like it and find it useful. However, I would be grateful for more platforms with the articles, visuals and campaign examples etc. (Something like the sections under this one for gender and coronavirus.)

Neverthless, I will definitely read more about the engagement with parliamentarians. That´s very interesting, many thanks!

Thank you Eva for the questions!

Perhaps other members can share examples of campaigns, articles and other resources with Eva?

Two more days to go until our third and final webinar dedicated to Communications for Development. We'll be talking about tools and concrete examples this week. Please have a look at the attached flyer of the event and share your questions, or your thoughts with us.

Thank you and wish you all a great day!

Flyer5_ODASeries2020_0.pdf286.76 KB

Dear community,

Thank you for participating in today’s webinar on Communication for Development. Please find the two resources, shared by Felix, from below:

• Event Summary: Partnering in Public Engagement https://sdg-communicator.org/2020/08/31/event-summary-partnering-in-public-engagement/
• Key Findings from an OECD DevCom Survey on how development ministries partner in their communications: http://www.oecd.org/dev/pgd/PartneringPublicEngagement_KeyFindings_DevComSurvey_June2020.pdf

We will share the recording of the webinar shortly.

Dear community,

You can find the recording of the third Communication for Development webinar from here:

Have a great week everyone!