The Drum Beat 714 - Communication and Change News and Issues

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Issue #

714

Communication and Change News and Issues - The Drum Beat 714
June 22 2016

EXPERIENCES: Digital Highrise, Population Speak Out, Playback Theatre
RECOGNISING Renewing CI Associates
STRATEGIC THINKING: Tanzania Media, Yellow Fever Mobilisation, World Bank Live
MATERIALS: Ag Disaster Communication, AIDSFree Community, Participatory Video Guide

From The Communication Initiative Network - where communication and media are central to social and economic development.

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EXPERIENCES

1. Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise
This interactive digital documentary takes viewers into the apartments, hearts, minds, and computers of vertical citizens in Guangzhou, China, the suburbs of Mumbai, India, New York's public housing projects, and beyond. Drawing on documentary, fiction, photography, film, data art, and webGL, Universe Within presents the viewer with questions about ethics, emotions, and empathy in our digital, vertical environments. It is meant to be a conversation starter that will engage urban affairs audiences interested in taking a look inside highrise communities around the world, uncovering the ways the digital world is enmeshed in offline networks and placemaking and unpacking emerging city-building issues and opportunities.
2. Edutainment for Social Participation
Implemented in Colombia by PCI Media Impact and the Fundación Social, this programme is designed to strengthen the capacities of members of community organisations, especially youth, on the use of the approach and methodology of edutainment to promote the processes of planning and participatory management. Following formative research, training and planning, and participatory design, the participants chose a local problem and created a message to convey to their community through the medium of entertainment. Participants developed their communication products (e.g., a fictional short video, a series of comic books, and radio novelas) introduced them to the other inhabitants in the framework of the territorial development processes.
3. Global Population Speak Out
This project of Population Media Center and Population Institute is designed to bring new voices into the realm of population activism and public education. It provides people engaged in addressing environmental concerns with materials and messages to help them raise awareness and catalyse change. Speak Out uses social media, word of mouth, and direct action to engage opinion leaders, scientists, and citizens of the world to respond creatively to environmental degradation. Speak Out emphasises discussion around promoting human rights and human health as solutions to preserving the rights of other species to exist and the health of the planet.
4. Mission 1000
Every year, Mission 1000 tries to reach out to 1,000 underprivileged children and women across India to transform their lives by providing free self-defense karate workshops. Local volunteers help translate everything in the participants' language; in this way, Colorss Foundation hopes to break the language barrier to ensure women and young girls can fully understand the self-defense techniques. For those who cannot attend these workshops, the Colorss Foundation developed a standalone self-defense app for use on Android platforms. Colorss is looking for options where any language barriers can be resolved through better technical solutions.
5. Playback Theatre
Playback Theatre is an interactive form of improvisational theatre in which audience members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. It is used in a range of contexts including public performances, community arts, social dialogue, peace building, conflict resolution, education, change management, and celebrations. There are regular Playback training courses, gatherings, and festivals in different parts of the world. Practiced in over 50 countries, Playback Theatre promotes the right for any voice to be heard, brings group concerns to the surface, and stimulates a dialogue by making different perspectives visible.

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Gratitude for Our Renewing Communication Initiative Associates

Do you turn to The CI for information, inspiration, and/or interaction in support of your C4D pursuits? Profiled in a recent Drum Beat , The CI Associates are organisations and individuals who recognise the added value The CI provides to their work by providing a small financial contribution.

We would like to thank especially the following Associates, who recently renewed their commitment to support their own work through the work of The CI:

To learn more and to join these organisations by becoming a CI Associate, click here or contact Victoria Martin

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STRATEGIC THINKING

6. Impact of Media Strategies by Six Civil Society Organisations in Tanzania: Information, Media and Action Study
by Dr. Ayub RiobaAccountability Tanzania (AcT) led a study to assess the effectiveness of media strategies used by partner civil society organisations (CSOs) during strategic interventions to increase the responsiveness and accountability of government. Overall, the study found that "almost all respondents in the six CSOs in this study strongly maintain that largely it takes more than just a message through one medium to have citizens take action." Likewise, "newspapers, radio, television or social media do not necessarily function in isolation with other more traditional means such as face to face meetings, songs, drama, Khanga messages, church/mosques, traditional ceremonies and other such forms of oramedia." [Nov 2014]
7. Communication and Social Mobilization in Yellow Fever Mass Vaccination Campaigns: 10 Points from Field Experience
by Max Tello"Effective communication techniques - in the form of advocacy, social mobilization, and social and behavioral change - are key to a successful mass vaccination campaign." From the Yellow Fever Initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO), this document is written to provide evidence-based guidance on conducting practical social mobilisation and communication for a yellow fever (YF) vaccination campaign, either preventive or reactive, from field experience. The publication also gives information on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of communication and social mobilisation techniques. [Jan 2015]
8. Use of Mobile Phones by the Rural Poor: Gender Perspectives from Selected Asian Countries
by Gerard Sylvester, ed.This paper attempts to shed light on potential gender differences in mobile ownership, accounting for the urban/rural setting as one of the factors that determine ownership. In the context of the fact that women comprise 43% of the world's agricultural labour force and yet do their work in the context of a digital divide, the two studies in this report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and LIRNEasia use empirical quantitative surveys as well as qualitative fieldwork from a cross-section of developing economies in South and South-East Asia. The paper recommends "a country-specific policy (rather than a generic one) with regard to reducing (and ultimately eradicating) the digital gender divide." [2016]
9. The "Radijojo Saga": A Global Children's Media Project from a "Mythodological" Perspective
by Thomas RöhlingerThis paper combines reflection on the work of the Radijojo World Children's Radio Network with the cross-cultural approach of Joseph Campbell, whose concept of the "myth" describes patterns that may help to understand the psychological, ethical, and sociological motivations of development activists and to find common structures in their operations. Author and head of Radiojojo Thomas Röhlinger uses Campbell's approach to mythology as an evaluation tool to recount and reassess the work of the children's radio project using what he calls "mythodology". [Jan 2015]
10. The World Bank Live: A Model of Marketing Success, But Is It the Right Model?
by David Ian ShamanPublished by the Bank Information Center (BIC), a civil society organisation (CSO) that monitors World Bank activities, this paper critically examines World Bank Live (WBL), the institution's video content platform which is designed to be conduit for sharing information to the public. "WBL's model of marquee lineups of development figures featured in well publicized events raises important questions: Is this the only or even the most appropriate use of WBL to share knowledge with its stakeholders?" [June 2016]

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MATERIALS

11. Planning Communication for Agricultural Disaster Risk Management: A Field Guide
This field guide provides an overview on how to assess rural people's communication needs and how to plan and implement communication for development (ComDev) activities in the context of disaster risk management, crisis preparedness, and emergency response in agriculture, food security, and nutrition. It also provides guidance on how to apply ComDev to enhance participatory planning and results monitoring processes. [FAO, Feb 2015]
12. AIDSFree HIV Testing Services Community of Practice
This is a forum to connect with and learn from peers working in HIV testing services around the world. Community members ask questions, share lessons learned, access the latest literature and news in HIV testing, and learn from experts - all through a mobile-friendly, email-based format. Through the Community, members also receive updates on AIDSFree's upcoming HIV Testing Services webinars.
13. Participatory Video and the Most Significant Change: A Guide for Facilitators
by Sara Asadullah and Soledad MuñizThis toolkit is designed to support users in planning and carrying out evaluations using Participatory Video (PV) with the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique (PVMSC). It includes examples of innovations, experiments, experiences of a diverse group of people from across the world. [InsightShare, UNICEF, C4D Network, Jan 2015]
14. Make Children Safe: Children's Activity Book and Educator's Guide
These resources form part of Soul City's Soul Buddyz Clubs initiative and are designed to help children and educators take action around child abuse in South Africa. The activity book aims to help children know what constitutes abuse, know how to stay safe (covering issues such as social media safety and pornography), and learn about ways of stopping abuse from happening to them. The educator's guide seeks to guide those who are supporting the child-run Soul Buddyz Clubs. [2014]
15. How to Do an Audience Analysis: HealthCompass How-to Guide
This Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) guide, one of 23, is designed to enhance an SBCC campaign's effectiveness, through establishing a clear, detailed, and realistic picture of the audience. "As a result, messages and activities are more likely to resonate with the audience and lead to the desired change in behaviors." As stated here, it is important to involve stakeholders in the process. [Apr 2015]

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This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.

The Drum Beat is the email and web network of The Communication Initiative Partnership.

Full list of the CI Partners:
ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Citurna TV, Fundación Imaginario,Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Heartlines, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP), MISA, Open Society Foundations, Oxfam Novib, PAHO,The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNICEF,Universidad de los Andes, USAID, World Health Organization (WHO), W.K. Kellogg Foundation

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.

Chair of the Partners Group: Garth Japhet, Founder, Soul City [email protected]

Executive Director: Warren Feek [email protected]

The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries.

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