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The Drum Beat 475 - Communication and Change News and IssuesPublication DateJanuary 12, 2009
With this first issue of the year, we welcome 2009 and our work in supporting, connecting, and interacting with you - The CI Network. The Drum Beat currently has 42,885 subscribers from all over the world. Over the past twelve months (January 5 2008 - January 4 2009), there were 2,529,192 user sessions across The CI network of websites. As one of your first actions of 2009 (cross off one of your resolutions with this one!), we'd be grateful if you'd share this issue of The Drum Beat with your staff and broader networks. Interested people can subscribe to this growing network at The CI website. This issue of The Drum Beat features a small selection of recent summaries available on The Communication Initiative website from 3 of our knowledge sections - Experiences, Trends, and Strategic Thinking - which illustrate how communication and media are contributing to positive development action, around the world. Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Contact Deborah Heimann at dheimann@comminit.com
This British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service Trust (WST) initiative is shaped by the observation that the media, governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have a crucial role to play in raising awareness amongst the public about risk management. Launched in December 2007 in India, the 15-month pilot project centres around a series of 5-day training workshops for print and broadcast journalists and NGO representatives. The Trust hopes to enable interaction between these groups that might spark the development of fruitful relationships. In addition, shorter workshops for government officials in each state focus on how to cooperate with the media more effectively. Finally, a 3-day workshop for local radio professionals explores the design and production of public service announcements (PSAs) on disaster preparedness. Contact: Click here to access an online contact form 2. The Literacy Project - Caribbean, Latin America, North America Through a variety of media and documentation methodologies, this initiative communicates the experiences of men and women who have taught literacy to others, worked to implement literacy programmes, or struggled to achieve literacy themselves. The volunteer-run oral history and research project centres around a website that collects, shares, and archives personal testimonies about literacy in the Americas. Organisers are in the process of exploring the history of literacy campaigns and literacy programmes throughout the Americas, with a special focus on the intersection of race, class, and gender as it relates to literacy. Contact: info@theliteracyproject.org Launched as a global broadcast on October 8 2007, this initiative involves the creation and broadcast of 10 documentaries by independent filmmakers from around the world. "Why Democracy?" is participatory and intercultural, in that its production process involves youth from various countries working together to use the media of documentary film/video and computing/the internet to share ideas about the issue of governance. Along with the project's website, the films are accompanied by a post-transmission distribution programme on DVD that is intended for educational purposes, as well as for use for broadcasters. This will be accompanied by a facilitator's guide (also in 5 languages), featuring issues raised, questions, and activities for users. Contact: Mette Heide m.heide@post.tele.dk OR Don Edkins don@steps.co.za / don@dayzero.co.za The Education Development Center (EDC), in partnership with the International Rescue Committee, is reaching out to schools and communities in the DRC with the goal of increasing stakeholder capacity to access and pay for quality education. PAGE uses a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach spanning 3 complementary components: interactive radio instruction, community participation, and education policy. The radio programme features a cast of characters who live in a village and encourage students to learn through a variety of stories, songs, and teacher-led activities. Organisers distribute resource kits and national curricula, and conduct training with supervisors and teachers in active learning paedagogy and the integration of local resources and knowledge. Parents eager to give their children the opportunity to benefit from radio instruction join parent associations and learn new techniques for generating income for school-related expenses. At the national level, advocacy efforts are designed to help legislators understand the financial burden of sending children to school and the need for school-based businesses and parent-driven income generating activities. Contact: Helen Boyle hboyle@edc.org SETU is an India-specific platform for sharing the documents, publications, resources, and outputs of the India HIV/AIDS Alliance and other organisations working on similar issues in India. Open to the global public, the website includes knowledge organised around a number of key themes; for example, the photo and film gallery includes a photo essay with images including an informal educational support to children from HIV/AIDS-affected families, a condom demonstration by an outreach worker, a support group meeting of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA), community volunteers walking with basic medical kits in order to provide care, and a peer educator imparting sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV/AIDS knowledge. Contact: pvarma@allianceindia.org The NGO Tambarina is engaged in an effort to empower regional development associations in Guinea-Bissau by providing them with development tools and mechanisms, improving the management and technology skills of entrepreneurs launching micro-projects, and strengthening community-led development initiatives. A pan-African team of development workers and practitioners travel across the country in a "development bus", specially equipped with a computer, radio broadcast equipment, and instructional material. Various training sessions are held for 9 regional antennae teams, including a radio workshop, language lessons (English and French), a broadcasting video workshop, and a media-tech/internet session. In addition to strengthening the skills of local development agencies and entrepreneurs by sharing knowledge about local development mechanisms, this project strives to include young people in the development process and its practical application. Contact: Jean-Michel Vanzo jm.vanzo@tambarina.org 7. HIV/AIDS/Maternal/Child Health Public Service Announcement Campaign - Cambodia The BBC WST produced a series of television and radio PSAs in Cambodia designed to encourage awareness and inspire healthy behaviours. Loak Chuoy ("Mr. Help") is a talking animated condom starring in many of the radio and TV PSAs. In one such spot, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador (and actor/action hero) Jackie Chan teams up with Loak Chuoy to send the message that even "tough guys" need the protection that condoms offer. Jackie Chan also joined the fight against HIV-related stigma by starring in another of the campaign's PSAs alongside a group of Cambodians living with HIV and AIDS. Children participate in many of the PSAs. For example, in one of the campaign's maternal and child health PSAs on breastfeeding, a child sings some advice to her mother based on a traditional lullaby. A leading boy band composer put music to the lullaby to jazz it up. "The PSA become so successful that you could download it as a ring-tone on your mobile phone in the market." Contact: Click here to access an online contact form Please VOTE in our NEW Democracy and Governance Poll: Which of the following can best support media in democratisation efforts? Support through...
VOTE and COMMENT click here. 8. Portugal: Mobile Phones in Schools According to this report, over 1.83 billion calls were made by 14.3 million Portuguese mobile telephone subscribers in the second quarter of 2008. This is a nearly 5% increase in the total number of subscribers compared to the previous quarter and an increase of more than 15% compared to the same quarter the previous year, leading Europe in mobile penetration. One researcher at the Portuguese Catholic University comments, "[m]any innovative practices come from inside the classroom, where teachers are using mobile phones as creative tools, as bridges to family life, and as incentives to raise motivation levels. There are also very interesting examples from teachers with handicapped students where mobile phones are used to integrate those students and introduce them to new activities..." 9. Muckrakers of the World Unite by David E. Kaplan This blog on the Global Investigative Journalism Conference describes the arrival of 500 reporters from 87 countries to share tips on everything from investigating war criminals to exposing corruption in sports. The author indicates that investigative journalism is thriving outside the United States (US), where news organisations are shutting down investigative teams and laying off their most experienced reporters. Conference organisers "attribute the rapid spread of investigative techniques, in part, to the global gatherings...The conference teemed with talk of new models of investigative reporting, including Internet-driven investigations, multinational networks, and community-driven journalism. Of special interest was the rise of nonprofit news organizations..." 10. Video Games Start to Shape Classroom Curriculum This article profiles the use of video games as curricular tools in US classrooms. According to the article, "video games are now winning over many middle- and high-school teachers as a way to inspire kids to learn." A game-centric school requiring a new teaching philosophy is being proposed for the New York City (New York, US) school system. "Traditional school activities - for example, converting fractions into decimals - will be presented as quests that are part of a larger game, which could last days or weeks to unravel." However, one author cited here claims that less than 1% of US schools teach through video games. In addition, according to the article, there is much debate on how to use them. Standardised testing remains the required measure of student learning in the US, which has "forced teachers to push facts, not skills." 11. The Role of Mobile Phone in Sustainable Rural Poverty Reduction by Asheeta Bhavnani, Rowena Won-Wai Chiu, Subramaniam Janakiram, and Peter Silarszky Produced by the World Bank Group's Global ICT (GICT) department, this paper examines the role of mobile telephones in sustainable poverty reduction among the rural economically poor. The document states that the barriers - educational, economic, and infrastructure-related (lack of electricity, in particular) - once thought by economists to limit information and communication technology (ICT) uptake seem to be surmountable: "developing economies have found ingenious ways around them, given the obvious benefits that the use of mobile telephony can bring..." The authors examine various trends, such as blogging, user-generated content, and Wikis, which garner "...real-time access to relevant content, created among the community and by the community to address pressing issues, perhaps initially education and health, but increasingly other social functions...[and] decreasingly isolation, flattening the learning curve and removing the need to reinvent the wheel for every type of community initiative: from education, finance, health, microfinance, private sector development, and many other arenas." PROMOTE YOUR OPPORTUNITIES, EVENTS, SERVICES, AND BOOKS! Development Classifieds is an initiative of The Communication Initiative which includes listings of any development-related jobs, consultants, requests for proposals (RFPs), events, training opportunities, and books, journals, or videos for sale. Please see the Classifieds website. The next issue of the Development Classifieds E-magazine will be published January 21st. Please submit open vacancies from within your organisation, event information, training opportunities, upcoming RFPs, details about your consultancy skills, and information about books, journals, or videos for sale as soon as possible to ensure inclusion. See Classifieds website or contact jsavidge@comminit.com for more information. by Amy E. Latimer, Peter Salovey, and Alexander J. Rothman This article explores research on loss-framed messages, which emphasise health cost (e.g., disease - not financial cost), and gain-framed messages emphasising health benefits. A meta-analysis of 93 studies showed a small but significant advantage for gain-framed over loss-framed messages for encouraging disease prevention behaviours, but only in dental hygiene behaviour (which is construed as a prevention behaviour with certain outcomes, as opposed to getting a flu shot, which may be construed as having less certain outcomes). The findings also indicate that "individuals who are motivated by the presence of positive outcomes are persuaded to engage in disease prevention behaviors by gain-framed messages. Loss-framed messages persuaded individuals who are motivated by the absence of negative outcomes to engage in disease prevention behaviors....Evidently, to obtain a full understanding of the impact of gain-framed appeals, researchers and practitioners must aim to deliver and evaluate framed messages suited to the individual." 13. Media Pluralism, Democratic Discourses and Political Accountability in Africa by Wisdom J. Tettey This document describes the media landscape of the previous two decades on the African continent, which "over this period has shown significant shifts, with tremendous expansion in the number of media outlets as democratic transformations make inroads into what used to be largely dictatorial political environments." The author describes the positive and negative views of these media developments, exploring strategies for enhancing the media's ability to influence the public sphere as a progressive force and to contribute to accountability on the part of various actors in society. For example, "...the legislature... should ensure that the media are not hamstrung by laws that are inimical to a vibrant and pluralistic public sphere and... degrade their ability to hold various actors accountable to the citizenry. The judiciary also needs to interpret laws in ways that are not dictated by loyalty to persons in government but to the cause of democracy, civil liberties, and political freedoms." In addition, "...the media themselves have a role in sustaining their place as vessels for democratic expression, accountability, and democratic consolidation." 14. Adolescent Refugees and Migrants: A Reproductive Health Emergency by Cate Lane This document gives a global overview of the state of young people considered migrants, including internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, rural-urban migrants, market traders, seasonal workers, and clandestine migrants. As indicated in the document, the health of adolescents in transition can be particularly challenging concerning unsafe sexual and reproductive health (RH) behaviours, which result in high rates of unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and HIV/AIDS. Key elements identified by organisations providing RH/family planning (FP) services to youth are outlined; for example, cultural sensitivities around the provision of RH/FP information and services to youth must be recognised, and multi-sectoral approaches that coordinate protection, health, community, skills-building, and education can optimise the approach to marginalised youth, particularly if youth are included in the planning phases. In conclusion, the document favours a donor and government agenda to assure more broad-based and systematic commitment to the needs of adolescents: for refugees, help to develop the necessary skills that will prepare them for repatriation and rebuilding; and for youth and children in urban slums, development of infrastructure, schools, health services, and employment options, in addition to food and security. If you are working at a United Nations Agency please complete a brief survey to provide relevant knowledge and ideas for the forthcoming UN Roundtable on Communication for Development. You can access the survey by clicking here. Thank you. 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. Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, click here for our policy. To subscribe, click here. Placed on the Communication Initiative site January 08 2009 Last Updated January 09 2009 How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work? Post your comments (review comments from others below):COMMENTS POSTED |
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