[Kictanet] "AN EAR TO THE GROUND and A CRY FROM THE HEART"

[alice at apc.org]

Dear KICTANet members,

For those significantly engaged in communication and media for development
work, the communication initiative  would very much welcome your feedback
and suggestions related to a draft Communication and Media for Development
MANIFESTO - tentatively titled "An Ear to the Ground and a Cry from the
Heart"  - that they issued this past weekend through The Drum Beat Magazine.

This manifesto is derived from knowledge and analysis shared by the network
through The CI processes. It attempts to meet a need so often expressed by
people and organisations engaged in communication and media for development
work - the requirement for a short, succinct paper that makes the case for
why this work is crucial for the effectiveness,  efficiency and core
principles of overall Development action.

The draft Manifesto is also included below in this note. It can also be
seen, as an issue of The Drum Beat magazine, at
http://www.comminit.com/drum_beat_363.html

There are two substantive ways in which the further development and
strengthening of this Manifesto would greatly benefit from the contribution
of your skills, knowledge, analysis and insights:

1. Please complete the brief survey form at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=662892502330


2. Join the online discussion for the month of September during which we
will try to debate and refine [or maybe substantially re-write!] this
Manifesto. To join click here:
http://forums.comminit.com/profile.php?mode=register&style=2
and choose the "Drumbeat Chat' check box


Thank you very much - we all greatly appreciate your contribution in helping
to build this case for our work - a case that people can use in a variety of
ways including within their own organisations, with local communities and
national and international decision makers to demonstrate the considerable
added value and potential of communication for media development in
addressing the very significant development challenges in all communities,
countries and regions.


The Draft manifesto follows.

Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative


***

"AN EAR TO THE GROUND and A CRY FROM THE HEART"
Effective Anti-Poverty Action through Increased Communication and Media for
Development Action

The Communication and Media for Development Manifesto

DRAFT

This manifesto proposes a set of steps for local, national and international
development decision makers and funders to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of the overall work of their organisations in addressing poverty
and related issues. The proposals are based on an analysis of the
significant challenges facing local, national, and international development
and the extensive impact opportunities provided by communication and media
for development action.


1. DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
An Analysis of the Requirements for More Effective Development Action

The struggle against poverty, including the race to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and to implement effective poverty reduction
strategy (PRS) programmes, requires mobilising and harnessing all possible
global capacities and resources.

In particular, there is a pressing and compelling need for capacities and
strategies that can best address the vital human and social dimensions of
poverty, governance, health, education, conflict, HIV/AIDS, children, and
other priority development issues at the scale required.

All development issues, including the central issue of poverty itself, have
questions of social norms, cultural dynamics, policy considerations,
individual behaviours and attitudes, historical factors, knowledge,
information, and creativity as both central elements of those development
problems and strategic opportunities for effective action.

International development, if it is to be more effective and efficient
relative to the MDGs and PRS programmes, needs to have a much closer
collective "ear to the ground". It is the situations and experiences of
people and communities directly experiencing poverty and related issues that
will ensure relevant and effective strategies and initiatives.

Local, national and international decision makers can also improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of their work by increasing the extent to which
they listen to the "cries from the heart" of people in their communities.
Those cries will include valuable ideas and suggestions for effective
programmes.

This is not just a matter of improved and more effective use of limited
resources. It is also a fundamental human right that people drive and decide
the changes in their lives, families, and communities. It is their lives in
which we have the honour of engaging.

Communication and Media for Development is an extensive and dynamic
community of practitioners and organisations that seek to advance this
desperately needed approach to development. The context and analysis above
drive the nature of our work. The qualities, scope, and demonstrated impact
of communication and media for development are what keep us advocating for
increased support and growth.


2. COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA FOR DEVELOPMENT
Strategic and Programmatic Action for Effective International Development
Action

Considering the arguments and analysis above, the following local, national,
and international development qualities and strategies, which are the core
elements of communication and media for development, are required in greater
depth and scale:

VOICE: Increased space for and attention to the voice, perspective, and
central contribution of those most affected by poverty and other development
issues.

KNOWLEDGE: Widened and expanded knowledge and information sharing including,
for improved relevance and other reasons, a higher priority on knowledge and
information generated within the communities and countries that are bearing
the heaviest burden of poverty and related issues.

CULTURE: Improved ways to engage the rich cultural diversity across the
globe and the important and diverse ways in which those varied cultures
understand, address, and harness the vitally important factors of
leadership, community, behaviour, and inclusion in order to improve their
families, communities and countries.

DEBATE: Significantly expanded public and private debate and dialogue on the
issues that are of priority importance in each international, national, and
local context.

POLICY: More open, participative, and inclusive processes of policy
development that increase the substantive integration of the views and
perspectives of those most affected by poverty and other development issues.

LEGISLATION: More effective legislation, including on media, supporting a
pluralistic communication environment with space for a full range of
organisations and voices.

BEHAVIOUR and ATTITUDES: Expanded focus on addressing the relevant
behaviours of both people affected and decision makers in order to
accelerate action on the development issues of concern.

DATA: Improved collection, sharing, and utilising of data related to the
human and social dimensions of development.


3. DEMONSTRATED CHANGE
The Demonstrated Effectiveness of Communication and Media for Development
Action

3.1 Historical Change

There are compelling and credible historical processes that had effective
communication and media strategies as essential parts of their overall
strategy. The Civil Rights, anti-Apartheid, anti-Tobacco, Representative
Democracy, Child Rights and Women's Movements, as well as other past and
ongoing global, regional, national and local social movements, have all
included communication strategies as a main (often the central) part of
their change effort. In many cases, all that these movements used were
communication and media strategies. There is no vaccine, for example, for
civil rights.


3.2 Research Data

There is an increasing body of research and evaluation knowledge on the
direct impact of communication and media for development action on poverty
and its related and contributing factors - data that includes, relative to
major development priorities:

Poverty:

* Local Language Media - India: States with higher levels of media
development are more active in protecting vulnerable citizens....A 1%
increase in newspaper circulation is associated with a 2.4% increase in
public food distribution and a 5.5% increase in calamity relief
expenditures.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2005/evaluations-45.html

* Voices of Women - AWSO - Middle East: In a programme to support Arab
women's achievement of economic security, nearly 69% of participants
contrasted with only 40% of non-participants, reported that they knew where
to obtain information about business or personal loans. Participants were
also significantly more likely than were non-participants to find out about
training that could benefit them professionally (94% versus 68%).
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/id2002/sld-2431.html

Governance:

* Democratising Knowledge - Uganda: Increased public access to
information...reduce[s]...corruption of public funds....[Corrupt] capture of
public funds was reduced from 80 percent in 1995 to less than 20 percent in
2001. http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2005/evaluations-75.html

* Information Flows - Global: Empirical analysis shows that countries which
have better information flows as measured by both freedom of information and
transparency have better quality governance.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2005/evaluations-137.html

* New Technologies - Gyandoot - India: Citizens in the community perceive a
shift in corruption levels, especially in terms of access to information and
lesser harassment by the government officials.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/steval/sld-2152.html

Gender:

* Public Debate and Declaration - Tostan - Burkina Faso: 23 communities made
a public declaration for the abandonment of the practice of female genital
cutting (FGC) in front of 5,000 villagers, religious, traditional and
political leaders, the media and programme managers from government,
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international organisations.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2006/evaluations-218.html

* Inter-personal Discussion - MAP - South Africa: 71% of the male
participants believed that women should have the same rights as men, whereas
only 25% of men in the control group felt this way. 82% of the participants
thought that it was not normal for men to sometimes beat their wives,
whereas only 38% of the control group felt that way.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/idkdv2003/sld-2350.html

Children:

* Campaign - The Philippines: The proportion of fully vaccinated children of
ages 12-23 months increased from 54% to 65%. The average number of
vaccinations that a child under 2 years received increased from 4.32 to
5.10. Coverage increased between 1989 and 1990 by 0.77. The amount of this
increase that was attributed to the media and communication was 0.54.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/idmay15/sld-2278.html

* Promotion - Mexico: Conclusion - mass media promotion and popular
communication campaigns are an effective strategy for informing and
motivating mothers to seek immunisation services for their children.
Overall, 83% were aware of the campaign and 63% were impacted by its
messages. The net increase in immunisation between the "aware" and "unaware"
groups was 14.8%, though it must be recognised that a relatively large
proportion of the "unaware" mothers also took their children for
vaccinations, a feature the authors attribute to long-term momentum gained
by successive vaccination campaigns.
http://www.comminit.com/strategicthinking/st2004/thinking-589.html

Maternal Mortality:

* Participation - Suami/Suagi - Indonesia: When husbands were exposed to
multi-media campaign messages about maternal mortality prevention and birth
preparedness, men's knowledge increased and men's action toward becoming an
alert husband increased; furthermore, the odds of knowledge acquisition and
taking action were even higher for men who engaged in interpersonal
communication about the campaign messages.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2006/evaluations-288.html

* Education-Entertainment - Smiling Sun - Bangladesh: Twice as many
respondents (14%) who had watched the drama had received services than those
who had not seen (7%) the drama. 9% of viewers had actually visited a clinic
after being inspired by the drama. 70% of viewers had received antenatal
care (ANC) services during their last pregnancy, as compared to 48% of
non-viewers. 58% of non-viewers, versus 41% of viewers, said they had taken
"no preparations" in advance of their last pregnancy.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/idkdv2003/sld-2343.html

Health and HIV/AIDS:

* Mass Media Trends and Access - Africa: There is a persistent and
frequently strong association between exposure to the mass media and
reproductive behaviour in Africa in the expected direction; greater
knowledge and use of contraception, intention to use contraception in the
future, preferences for fewer children and intention to stop child bearing.
In Zambia, 15% of married women with no education regularly exposed to radio
and TV are currently using contraception compared with 9% exposed to one of
those media and 7% exposed to no media.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/idmay15/sld-2291.html

* Integrated Multi-Communication - Soul City - South Africa: Exposure to
Soul City multi-media over 6 series is significantly associated with reports
of consistent condom use in relation to a regular sexual partner in the
preceding 12 months (p=0.009). Compared to respondents with no exposure,
respondents with exposure to Soul City multi-media over 6 series were 4
times as likely to report always using a condom with a regular sexual
partner - with a consistent dose response. (See table 8: OR low exposure =
2.6; OR medium exposure = 3.8; OR high exposure = 4.) Conversely, exposure
to Soul City multi-media over 6 series is associated with reducing the
likelihood of reporting "never" using a condom with a regular sexual partner
in the preceding 12 months (p=0.000). [from Sue Goldstein and Esca
Scheepers. "Using Edutainment for Social Change - Evidence from Soul City
Over 6 Series" - to be uplaoded shortly - contact Sue Goldstein
suegold at soulcity.org.za

Environment:

* Drama - Arcandina - Ecuador: Knowledge that water consumption is dependent
on population needs and that this is a key problem to maintaining a healthy
environment increased from 50% to 75%; knowledge that erosion is due to
uncontrolled forestry by human populations increased from 39.1% to 74.5%;
and knowledge that the destruction of the environment is due to human
behaviours increased from 33% to 75%.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/idkdv2002/sld-2359.html

* Engagement of Local Views and Contributions - Gwira Banso - Ghana: 50% of
all farms planted trees supporting local reforestation.
http://www.comminit.com/evaluations/eval2006/evaluations-259.html


There are many other examples and a range of additional data.


4. PROPOSED ACTIONS FOR LOCAL, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY MAKERS AND
FUNDERS

As a community of over 100,000 people in over 5,000 different organisations
across all countries and regions of the globe seeking improved international
development action, we ask local, national, and international participants
and decision makers across the spectrum - from children, mayors and national
government officials to global technical experts, funders, and senior United
Nations, bilateral, and foundation staff - to take the following actions.
These actions provide the building blocks for growing and strengthening the
important strategic and programming steps highlighted above. They derive
from the proof of principle - both social movements and research/evaluation
data - also cited above. The key steps that we request are:

4.1 An expanded and more direct involvement within your decision making,
policy making and funding processes of people and organisations whose
experience is rooted, on a daily basis, in the development issues that are
the priority for your organisation.

4.2 An increased emphasis, as part of your organisation's strategy in local,
national, and international contexts, on promoting debate and dialogue on
priority issues - thus balancing the present tendency to promote particular
answers, positions or organisational brands.

4.3 A higher priority in your data collection and analysis on communication
and media knowledge and impact related to local, national, and international
development action.

4.4  The employment of more staff across your organisation with skills,
interests, and experience in communication and media for development.

4.5 A budget line for communication and media within all of your programmes
and projects with formal guidance to programme managers to expend between 5
and 10% of budgets on communication and media action directly related to the
priority development issues they are addressing.

4.6 An increase in funding support by your organisation for specific
communication and media development strategies, programmes and other
initiatives.

These proposals are justified by the history, scope, and demonstrated impact
of communication and media for development. They are presented in the
context of recent funding trends towards a strong emphasis on aid
effectiveness, budgetary support and decentralised decision making to
country office locations.

Through the analysis and actions highlighted above the overall effectiveness
and impact of the work of your organisations will be strengthened.
Together - locally, nationally, and globally - we will all make more
substantive progress to address poverty and other priority local, national,
and international development issues.


***

1. Please complete the brief survey form at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=662892502330


2. Join the online discussion for the month of September during which we
will try to debate and refine [or maybe substantially re-write!] this
Manifesto. To join click here:
http://forums.comminit.com/profile.php?mode=register&style=2
and choose the "Drumbeat Chat' check box

You can also complete the Pulse Poll -

Do you agree or disagree? -
"The Communication and Media for Development Manifesto helps to make
arguments that will strengthen my work."
See http://www.comminit.com/pulse.html


Many thanks for engaging your thoughts and ideas as we jointly build the
strongest possible case for communication and media for development work -
very much appreciated.

Warren

Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative

wfeek at comminit.com
http://www.comminit.com

1-250-658-6372 [ph]
1-250-658-1728 [fx]
1-250-480-9770 [mobile]