The Drum Beat 662 - Communication and Change News and Issues

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662

The Drum Beat - 662 - Communication and Change News and Issues

THIS ISSUE INCLUDES:
EXPERIENCES:	Island Food Security, Children's Rights TV
EVALUATIONS:	Tailoring ART Messaging, Participatory Eval Tool
ADVERTISE	...your Vacant Job Posts through The CI
MATERIALS:	ICT & Agriculture, Gender Sensitivity in Media

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

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EXPERIENCES
1. CGNet Swara
CGNet Swara is designed to give the Adivasi (an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups claimed to be the aboriginal population of India) a voice that reflects their interests, local news, and events. This voice-based portal, freely accessible via mobile phone, allows people inside a sensitive territory in India termed "Maoist areas" to transmit local Adivasi news, such as reports of malaria cases in the villages, to others in the community.

2. Yap Fusion
This food security initiative addresses food processing and consumers' choices on Yap, an island located in Yap State of the Federated States of Micronesia. While direct contact and tasting meetings have been organised to reach women, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are designed to speak to youth, and participation with tasting samples in the private sector and government meetings intends to reinforce communication with adults, the elderly, and traditional networks.

3. Channel Pakapaka
This children's television channel, operated by the Ministry of Education of Argentina, focuses on children aged 2 to 11 years in Argentina and Latin America. It aims to promote access for the very young to information and materials that contribute to their development from various national and international sources in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and to stimulate their creativity and imagination, which organisers say supports diversity and inclusion.

4. UNESCO Climate Change Initiative
Each of the 4 core programmes of this United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) initiative is designed to play a role in bringing about a holistic understanding of climate change. Activities include establishing a global climate change forum, supporting educational activities, raising awareness and skills of the impact of climate on culture, and encouraging research on the social, human, ethical, and gender dimensions of climate change.

5. Entertainment Industries Council (EIC)
EIC's aim is to share - and recognise through its awards programmes - examples of accurate depictions of health and social issues in feature films, television, and music videos, as well as within music lyrics and the pages of comic books. For example, "This is Laura" encourages young women to embrace the power of education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). EIC also provides various resources and educational services to entertainment creators seeking to maximise the realistic attributes of health and social issues in their productions.

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EVALUATIONS
6. Using a Formative Research Rapid Assessment Method to Support the Development of a HIV/AIDS Antiretroviral Therapy Communication Campaign in Kenya by Tahir Turk and David Elkins
This article describes the process and results of a study in Kenya designed to identify specific audiences for an HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) communication/social marketing campaign and gauge the attitudes and opinions of this audience segment in relation to ART. "The themes identified in the formative research study and secondary data analysis greatly assisted in the development of the communication strategy, creative approaches, and more specifically, the tailoring of messages. This included the use of 'transformational appeals' in TV, radio spots and print materials, demonstrating how patient body morphology could return to a previous, 'healthy state'..." [Nov 2013]

7. Equal Access Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit by June Lennie, Jo Tacchi, Bikash Koirala, Michael Wilmore, and Andrew Skuse
The toolkit is guided by the principles of the communication for social change (CFSC) approach to communication for development (C4D) and participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E). It aims to help communication for development (C4D) organisations demonstrate the impacts and outcomes of their initiatives, listen to the people they are seeking to reach, continuously learn, and feed this learning back into their organisation and its practices. [Jun 2011]

8. The Impact of a Caribbean Home-Visiting Child Development Program on Cognitive Skills by Wendy Janssens and Cristina Rosemberg
This is a study of the impact of the Roving Care Givers programme of St. Lucia, a home visiting programme for vulnerable families of very young children. The study finds "strong and significant effects on the cognitive development of children aged between 6 and 18 months at program start, but not for the older birth cohort aged 18 to 30 months. In particular, their scores on the Visual Reception and Fine Motor Skills scales show substantial increases that are almost half a standard deviation higher than changes over time in the control group." [Jul 2012]

9. Playing for Change: Improving People's Lives Through Football by Dr. Anne Bunde-Birouste, S. Nathan, L. Kemp, C. Evers, T. Shwe, and J. MacKenzie
This research report examines a sport-for-development programme, Football United, involving refugee, immigrant, and disadvantaged youth and children in Australia. The effort to foster social cohesion involved leadership building, skills development, mentoring, and the creation of links with a range of local community leaders and organisations. Amongst the study's results: Boys in Football United schools had significantly lower scores on a measure of peer-related problems than boys in comparison schools and significantly higher scores on pro-social behaviour. [Jan 2012]

10. Village Voices for Development: A Study in the Use of Radio to Promote Human Rights and Enable Citizens to Act on their Rights to Information and Freedom of Speech in Southern Madagascar by Yvonne Orengo and Nicola Harford
This report shares results from the Village Voices for Development (VVD) project in Madagascar, designed to use radio as a tool to empower and enable citizens to learn about, understand, and act upon their rights to information and freedom of expression. An example of the findings: 86% of decision makers believed that VVD acted as an effective facilitator for communicating with citizens and clarifying development topics. [Andrew Lees Trust and Andry Lalana Tohana (ALT), May 2013]

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Advertise Your Vacant Job Posts through The CI

The CI provides immediate access to 75,000 people in the network and these people often pass job opportunities around their networks and contacts. You can immediately post your jobs (within an online payment system) here or contact [email protected] for assistance.

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MATERIALS
11. Participatory Capacity and Vulnerability Analysis: A Practitioner's Guide by Marilise Turnbull and Edward Turvill
Oxfam's participatory capacity and vulnerability analysis (PCVA) tool is a risk analysis process designed to help staff and partner organisations engage with communities in contexts where natural disasters are significant drivers of poverty and suffering. PCVA draws on a wide range of participatory learning and action (PLA) techniques and tools that are designed to channel participants' ideas and efforts into a structured process of analysis, learning, and action planning. [Jun 2012]

12. Global Commission on HIV and the Law
This website disseminates the report "HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights & Health" in an effort to help generate and build consensus around the evidence base: regional dialogues in 7 regions that ensured participation and inclusion of affected communities and law- and policy-makers, as well as a high-level commission intended to add insight and weight to findings and recommendations. [United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)]

13. Information and Communication Technologies for Agricultural Development in Latin America: Trends, Barriers and Policies by Mônica Rodrigues, ed. and Adrián Rodríguez, ed.
This document reports research results on: inclusion of information and communication technology (ICT) and its degree of prioritisation in governments of Latin America; the provision of hardware, software, and training at the various levels of agricultural governance, extension services, marketing, and farming; ICT diffusion in geographic regions (often urban-centric); and trends in ICT use in agriculture. [Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Feb 2013]

14. Communication at the Heart of Change - Video
The video explores what can happen when all people - including those economically poor and marginalised - are heard and given access to the information they need. For example, when governments are open, a free, diverse, dynamic, and informed media can ensure that people exercise their right to: hold governments to account; monitor their performance; and participate in decisions being made by giving people the opportunity to have their voices heard. [Panos, Apr 2010]

15. Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media: Framework of Indicators to Gauge Gender Sensitivity in Media Operations and Content by Ammu Joseph, Rosa María Alfaro, Alton Grizzle, Pamela Moriniere, and Leanda Barrington-Leach
The aim of the Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media (GSIM) is to contribute to gender equality and women's empowerment in and through media of all forms, irrespective of the technology used. The main focus of this publication is on the equality and gender dimensions of social diversity in the media. [UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists and other partners, Jan 2012]

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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 - Partners: ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Calandria, DFID, FAO, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Inter-American Development Bank, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, MISA, Oxfam Novib, PAHO, The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, The Rockefeller Foundation, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, The Wellcome Trust, 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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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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