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, Strategic Thinking, and Evaluations - 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

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The Drum Beat 481 contains:

•  Summaries of selected C4D programming EXPERIENCES.
•  Join your peers in sharing your voice: VOTE IN CI POLLS.
•  Summaries of selected C4D STRATEGIC THINKING articles.
•  Poll on MEDIA DEVELOPMENT TRENDS. 
•  Summaries from our C4D EVALUATIONS section.

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 EXPERIENCES

1. Association of People with Disability (APD) - India

Working since 1959, this registered voluntary organisation provides skills training for persons with disability and for persons who are economically marginalised. Motivated by the creed of "ability rather than disability", APD brings the community into its day-to-day work (the school is integrated and has children with and without disabilities, as do its youth groups) and reaches out to the community (through, for example, its Community Health Programme). APD's Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) project saw APD field staff coordinating with the local government health scheme and successfully increasing the immunisation coverage from 29% to 95%. The project now organises and empowers communities by developing skills on the part of community members. Computer training programmes are one approach APD uses to enable trainees to secure jobs, become economically independent, and create a meaningful life. "There is a concentrated effort towards motivation, training and organising community members, particularly women, young people and able-bodied people. Mobilising and organising the community has been our strength and we believe in participation."

Contact: ablehand@vsnl.com

2. TV de Calidad (Quality TV) - Colombia

This effort to bring high-quality television programming to Colombia's children fosters networking and action around 5 key areas: promoting regulations and incentives wherein private enterprises may show their social responsibility and its commitment to children; boosting national production of children's television; strengthening and offering qualifications for training of programmers, producers, and students; increasing emphasis on creative research and development; and stimulating parents' and educators' oversight of children's TV in Colombia, forming an educated audience that provides feedback to national producers. Led by Latin American organisations Fundación Imaginario and Citurna, TV de Calidad centres around an annual conference for delegates who seek to promote dialogue and debate about the social responsibility of television, the politics and regulatory frameworks that govern it, and the needs of children and adolescents. An online "community of practice" is meant to inspire interaction and idea exchange among media practitioners throughout the year.

Contact: Adelaida Trujillo atrujillo@citurna.com.co OR imaginario@citurna.com.co

3. Unsubscribe Campaign - United Kingdom, Global

Launched in October 2007, this Amnesty International initiative is a global movement of people united against human rights abuses that are carried out in the name of the "war on terror". Unsubscribe is mobilising people through human rights campaigning online, as well as through public protests and accompanying imagery, to send out a message to the government that, just as internet users do with unwanted emails, people are "unsubscribing". The form of education offered on the campaign website is not a didactic one (e.g., sharing facts and figures); instead, imagery is used to bring people into the experience of interrogation. For instance, Amnesty International has produced a "viral" video that "shows the intense suffering of a hooded prisoner during a horrifyingly realistic recreation of 'stress and duress' torture." Amnesty hopes that, having come to an understanding of the human rights issues at stake through viewing and sharing this and other films online, people will take concrete action - either online (e.g., by blogging or "digging") or in their communities (e.g., by organising public protests).

Contact: amnestyis@amnesty.org

4. Radio Apac - Uganda

This community radio station, broadcasting in northern Uganda, works to sensitise and educate residents of Apac about issues of importance to the community. The station engages the participation of the community in the production of the programmes, in part by holding research workshops to identify broadcast information needs. Its programmes are bilingual, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic, and aim to respond to the social and cultural needs of minority groups. Initial programming was educational - including distance education for primary and secondary schools, adult literacy programmes, health education, nutrition based on traditional foods, AIDS awareness, and farming practices. Programming has expanded to include agriculture, health, women and youth, environment, business, vocational training programmes, and governance. Radio Apac also operates a multimedia centre to serve community members.

Contact: radioapac@iwayafrica.com

5. Learning Now [Apprendre Maintenant] - Jamaica, Global

This educational software was originally designed for Jamaica and the West Indies, and includes an interactive literacy course for Jamaicans between the ages of 14 to 35. A new update of the software was published in January 2009. Learning Now v1 is fully customisable and can be adjusted to reflect any environment and cultural identity beyond the West Indies. The computer software features a young animated man who speaks to students in simple words, integrating positive reinforcements and fun without using jargon. The student interface looks and feels like a game interface and features sound effects and Jamaican popular music. Organisers stress that Learning Now is designed to enable teachers to adapt the interactive lessons and training sessions to each particular classroom/environment - as well as to customise lessons to fit other regions, cultures, and languages using music, video clips, sound effects, digital pictures, animations, and games. The hope is that this multiplatform tool could help in the preservation of endangered languages; connected to a library or archive preserving current resources, it could integrate them into interactive languages and cultural courses.

Contact: Fabrice Menoyot fabricemenoyot@gmail.com OR Alton Grizzle a.grizzle@unesco.org

6. Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) - Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, Philippines, Uganda, Zambia

This is an alliance of partners working at both national and international levels to improve access to medicines by increasing transparency and accountability in the healthcare marketplace. It is hoped that, by joining these personnel in face-to-face and virtual meeting spaces, brainstorming will be sparked about how to improve information access, scrutiny, and use, to the end of supporting the development of viable, efficient medicines markets and supply systems of essential health commodities such as contraceptives, diagnostics, drugs, laboratory supplies, and vaccines. Specifically, MeTA will implement actions designed to strengthen national capacity - including the capacity of stakeholder groups to engage in a process to collect, analyse, disclose, and use data on the quality and registration status of medicines, their availability, price, and promotion policies and practices. When a country implements MeTA, it signs on to a core code of principles, and also commits to fully involve civil society, business, and other stakeholders in the effort to help address problems in the pharmaceutical market. In MeTA countries, the average person - in time - should be able to access a wide range of information on the price, availability, quality, and promotion of medicines via the internet, local newspapers, television, and radio, and through community meetings.

Contact: info@metasecretariat.org OR admin@metasecretariat.org

7. Refugee Education Sponsorship Program: Enhancing Communities Together (RESPECT) - Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Canada, Guinea, Uganda

The Canada-based RESPECT has 3 main goals, with associated activities: 1) To build awareness of refugee issues among youth around the world - before partnering with refugee schools, North American students watch videos, review books and research, and/or engage in discussion - with materials provided by the refugee school and/or located through RESPECT's searchable Resource Database; 2) To connect international youth to refugee youth by pen friend letter exchange - RESPECT maintains a growing list of contacts with refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) schools around the world, and attempts to match pen pals based on age, sex, and interests; and 3) To encourage young people to organise events to teach others about refugee issues and to raise funds for their refugee school. Trainers from RESPECT are also available for presentations to schools (in Canada) about refugee issues, and an online forum and e-newsletter aim to encourage discussion.

Contact: respect@respectrefugees.org

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VOTE!

Share your voice in an instant...by quickly participating in one or more of The CI's polls! Located on the right side of each of our theme sites, the polls help you not only quickly weigh in on pressing issues but also see what your colleagues think. Once you vote, each time you visit our website while logged in, you will be able to see how the votes are dividing up. A visually efficient way to keep your finger on the pulse of the communication for development community!

Please VOTE!

Media Development - click here.

ICT4D - click here.

HIV/AIDS - click here.

Polio - click here.

Early Child Development - click here.

Democracy and Governance - click here.

Natural Resource Management - click here. 

Avian Influenza - click here.

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STRATEGIC THINKING

8. Mobiles Combat Kenyan Polio Outbreak

This September 18 2008 news report indicates that a mobile-phone-based health application has helped to investigate and contain a polio outbreak in Kenya, East Africa. The application EpiSurveyor, which can be downloaded onto handheld devices for free and is run on an open-source platform, was used by health officials to collate information on the disease, such as patient symptoms, treatment, levels of medical supplies, and areas that needed vaccines. Questionnaires were formulated and sent out to health workers instantaneously via mobile networks to obtain real-time information on the progress of the outbreak and emergency vaccination programme.

9. Decision Makers Do Want Communication - But They May Not Want Participation

by Wendy Quarry

This article discusses the gaps between rhetoric and implementation of communication strategy, using Afghanistan's National Solidarity Program (NSP) as an example for analysing "challenges and obstacles to a more fully integrated development communication approach." Wendy Quarry outlines the objectives of NSP, which were to lay the foundations for a strengthening of community-level governance, and to support community-managed sub-projects designed to improve the access of rural communities to social and productive infrastructure and services. Quarry seeks to understand why participatory communication support was discontinued during the NSP life cycle. She points to the desire to "fast track" state-building, the assumption that "rolling out" the message was sufficient, and the fact that the government may not be the best entity to carry out a fully participatory project. Quarry suggests that, "[i]nstead of expecting a better participatory approach from those institutions that do not really have participation within their mandate, let's work with them to help widen their understanding of what others may need to make participation effective."

10. Introducing Game Making to Promote Children's Creativity and Learning in Malaysia

by Maizatul H. M. Yatim

The author of this article believes that making games stimulates children's creativity at an early age. The use of Squeak Etoys as a tool to develop the games, integrating science and mathematics lessons, is demonstrated by illustrations in the article, including the SpaceShutter Project (in which the landing of a rocket was controlled, accounting for the impact of speed, acceleration, and aspects of momentum). In conclusion, the author observes that "[d]uring the game-making process children have to solve problems, with each step involving finding solutions and moving along with the process of refinement. No one tells them the rules of the games in advance. They must figure them out themselves through observation, trial and error, and a process of hypotheses testing. The rules go beyond decoding the meaning of individual icons on the screen; besides figuring out what the symbols mean, players must discover how they act."

11. Agenda-setting and Donor Responsiveness to Humanitarian Crisis and Development Aid

by Douglas A. Van Belle

This document explores how to develop a reliable explanation for how media, agenda setting, and donor responsiveness are intertwined. Examining disaster aid, the author reports that "starting in roughly 1990, media coverage suddenly ceased to be a statistically significant influence on the humanitarian response to natural disasters." He works from the contextual information that CNN coverage of Somalia in the 1990's appeared to influence humanitarian aid there, a phenomenon seemingly repeated in Bosnia and elsewhere. To reconcile these apparent contradictions, the author examines several theories, which lead him to the possibility that 3 key elements are at work in the relationship of aid and media: the nature of the news environment; the nature of the international environment; and the mechanism through which coverage influences aid. He concludes that: "Without a clear understanding of what factors are likely to be important in the current global political structure there is no way to know what might be the right combination of factors we need to use to sort out just how much news coverage matters. Still, with the information currently available...it is probably wise to formulate policy and other actions with the expectation that every bit of news coverage in donor nations creates a small increase in aid response and the occasional flood of coverage of a major disaster is likely to generate a massive response."

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Here's an example of one of the POLLS we currently have running:

Of the following media trends, which do you consider the most key for media development in 2009? [Choose as many as you wish; add your own in the "Comments" box. See the Media Devlopment website for more insight on these trends.]

• There is a decreasing difference between a journalist and a citizen reporting events.
• There is increasing interactivity between media and its public.
• News aggregation processes are becoming more prominent than single news brands.
• Free and independent media processes are being replaced by an increasing number of varied media outlets.
• The traditional media (i.e., television, radio, newspapers) are decreasingly important media "players".

VOTE and COMMENT - click here.

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EVALUATIONS

12. Community-Based Diversion for Children in Conflict with the Law: The Cebu City Experience

by Felisa U. Etemadi

This paper describes a community-based programme for children in conflict with the law in Cebu City in the Philippines. Built on mediation and restorative justice approaches, it was piloted by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Free Rehabilitation, Economic, Education and Legal Assistance Volunteers' Association (FREELAVA) in 12 Cebu City barangays. This programme builds on local governance structures and involves collaboration among barangay officials, professionals, and community volunteers, including past child offenders who serve as peer educators. The goal is to prevent child offenders from entering the criminal justice system ("diversion"). According to the author, the programme has led to several positive changes, including a decline in the number of child arrests and decreasing incarceration rates and abandonment of detention cells for children in all the pilot barangays. While diversion works positively for many children - and several narratives are shared in this paper - it appears to have little effect for those who have had several encounters with the law. Furthermore, "[a]dvocacy must be intensified to convince the public that...diversion and reintegration are worthy governance issues..."

13. Community Radio and Social Change: An Impact Evaluation in Bali, Indonesia

This report details an impact evaluation of a 3-year project centred on a community-oriented radio station in Bali, Indonesia. The evaluation was based around the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique, which Health Communication Resources (HCR) found encouraged participation, as community members shared their personal stories of change within the community brought about by the radio project. Respondents said the radio station had made the most significant change within the community by the integration of the community development approach between on-air and off-air programming. Strategies and activities were diverse, and included "fun days" involving community events, a village library for children, an intensive nutrition campaign, free medical clinics, and health community service announcements (CSAs). In addition, the station supported the many village religious and cultural ceremonies. In short, HCR found that Heartline Bali FM contributed to building social and human capital, that the community was now proud to have the radio station was in their community, and that they felt a sense of ownership as they participated in programming and activities.

14. Social Marketing Campaigns and Children's Media Use

by W. Douglas Evans

This article investigates United States-based social marketing campaigns in the electronic media. The author points out that social marketing campaigns have been effective in helping to prevent and control tobacco use, increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and promote condom use, as well as other positive health behaviours. The author notes some potential future applications to promote media use by children and adolescents that result in healthy behaviours and to mitigate the effects of exposure to commercial marketing. He recommends that future efforts draw on lessons learned from past efforts: "know the audience and target messages appropriately; use creative marketing and promotional strategies such as branding healthful lifestyle choices; use multiple channels to increase exposure; and address public policy in addition to individual behavior..." The author concludes by discussing 5 new media-related social marketing strategies under development - e.g., social marketers can place messages in media used by children and adolescents to network and take advantage of potential social diffusion effects (for example, through MySpace, Facebook, and iPods).

15. Donate Life California: A Campaign Launch Case Study

by Helen Allrich, Dr. Elizabeth Dougall, and David Heneghan

This case study analyses a communication campaign launched in April 2005 to spur residents of the state of California, in the United States, to share their organ donation wishes online. The campaign focused on educating the public about the importance of organ donation, calling upon Californians to act and attempting to break through the apathy and discomfort that organisers say may be associated with becoming an organ donor. According to the authors of this report, "the online registry's success was driven by a well-crafted strategic communication campaign underpinned by two core strategies - media advocacy, and grassroots support within local communities." Findings from community workshops were used to refine campaign messages, develop timelines, and devise a 3-tiered action plan, described here.. "The initial goal for the registry was 15,000 registrants in the first twelve months. Within the first six months, more than 175,000 people registered....In all, the launch received more than 200 media stories in the first few months. This media coverage contributed significantly to educating Californians about organ donation issues and spreading awareness about the new registry....[By] January 2007, one million Californians had registered."

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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.

Please send material for The Drum Beat to the Editor - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

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