The Communication Initiative

Chris Morry · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 314

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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Questions for week 1: What is your organizations' formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

The Communication Initiative (CI) is hosting this discussion because it is directly relevant to what we do so I thought I'd take a minute and outline our work in the context of the first week's questions.

The CI is a network of about 68,000 people using or interested in communication for development. These people come from about 200 countries with over 60% of them from 'developing' countries. Our role is to provide them with access to each other and to information about communication for development that will help them do their work better with the ultimate goal that this access will improve development outcomes generally. The tools we use for collecting and disseminating this information are a series of web sites (The Communication Initiative, La Iniciativa de Comunicación [in Spanish] and Soul Beat Africa) which contain summary information on programme experiences, strategic thinking, evaluation, materials, impact data and a range of other kinds of information on communication as it's used for development. This information is largely sent to us from members of the network and we now have over 35,000 summaries on the web sites. We disseminate this information through the web sites - it is all free and publicly available - and also through a series of e-mail newsletters. The newsletters are used to highlight new information on the web sites; focus on specific areas of development such as AIDS, natural resource management, human rights, governance; highlight areas of research and practice such as social entrepreneurship, national ICT policies, and trends and strategies in using print materials; and raise important issues for discussion through opinion pieces on such issues as assessing communication for empowerment, radio talk shows and conflict, and connected activism - to name just a few recent newsletters from the CI site.

Our approach is to do this in a way that encourages interaction, comment, discussion and individual exchange - in other words to move beyond information dissemination to a process that encourages engagement with the information and between the people behind the information. There are a few fundamentals in our methodology for doing this. We summarise information in a non-judgemental way keeping the language neutral and letting the network decide what is useful. Every summary has a contact to encourage horizontal communication between the people behind the research or programme and the people who feel it may be of use to them. Every summary page has a rating and comment section to allow the network to build its own value and ranking of different summaries. We also use the opinion or commentary based newsletters in combination with polls to encourage discussion.

We recognise that many members of the network do not have access to cheap or reliable internet so we use our newsletters to disseminate information in an even more summarised form so that people can quickly scan new resources and follow up on the ones they find important. We also include contact information in the newsletters themselves so people can go straight to the source without going to one of the web sites at all. This also allows the newsletters to be forwarded or printed out and shared beyond the network.

We monitor and evaluate all of this by using occasional user surveys (internet and e-mail based), by tracking the interactive processes, reviewing comments and analysing web use numbers. There is a recent summary of a network survey at http://www.comminit.com/drum_beat_354.html

Some of the difficulties we've faced have been dealing with the large amount of information the network now sends us, maintaining a content balance between the different areas of development action (ie too much health information and not enough human rights or governance), making sure that information remains accessible as the number of summaries grows and responding to the needs of an increasingly diverse network. We have responded to these issues by putting tracking systems in place for content and improving the search mechanisms on the web sites. In terms of meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse network we have begun to build partnerships with a wider range of organisations and to develop ways to focus information on both the web sites and the newsletters that are tailored to specific audiences. However, these issues are ongoing and require fairly constant revisiting and planning.

I look forward to the rest of this discussion,

Cheers

Chris

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tsulliva · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 2

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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Questions for week 1: What is your organizations' formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

At the INFO Project, based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs, our mission is to support health care decision-making in developing countries by providing global leadership in reproductive health knowledge management. Specifically, we aim to inform those who influence and improve health care and public health, enhance the capacity of communities and organizations to obtain, adapt, and generate knowledge and best practices, and connect communities, organizations, and individuals locally and globally to facilitate knowledge sharing and dialogue.

We have found the following tools useful for planning, producing, and disseminating information and communication products and services:

(1) “Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Information Products and Services” which is currently in draft form and available at: http://www.hipnet.org/minutes/dec2006/MEGuideReviewDraft12-14-06.doc
Developed through a collaborative process with Health Information and Publications Network (HIPNet), the guide was produced to (1) provide a core list of indicators for organizations to use to measure information services’ and products’ reach, usefulness, use, and impact in a consistent way; and (2) improve monitoring and evaluation by simplifying selection and application of indicators. The guide also includes an original logic model framework (“Conceptual Framework for the Provision of Information Products and Services”) meant to guide program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The framework relates key areas for measurement of information programs (reach, usefulness, use and outcomes of use) to standard logic model components: inputs, processes, outputs and initial, intermediate, and long-term outcomes. One unique aspect of this model is that it includes audiences, emphasizing the desire to target and tailor information programs to meet a variety of professional health information needs.

(2) “Smart Toolkit for evaluating information products and services” available at: http://www.dgroups.org/groups/leap/impact/index.cfm?op=dsp_resource_de tails&...
The main objectives of the Toolkit are to provide users with: “Clear, easy-to-use guidelines to evaluate an information product/service; Access to the tacit knowledge of information practitioners and managers; Tools designed for situations where the main purpose of the evaluation is to improve the management and performance of the information activity.” This Toolkit was developed through a collaboration between the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) and The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT). The Toolkit is “for organisations interested in learning how to improve their project management practices as well as develop a culture of evaluation.”

Tara M. Sullivan, PhD
Research Associate, INFO Project
Assistant Scientist
Department of Health, Behavior & Society
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health
Center for Communication Programs
www.infoforhealth.org

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rramirez · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 11

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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Dear Participants:

We thank you for the inputs during this first week.

We heard about the importance of responding to people's needs and incorporating folk media in rights based approaches.

Another contributor emphasized working with farmers and providing them with the tools to enhance farmer to farmer communication. This was complemented with the experience by ILEIA with a step by step approach to documenting relevant field experiences so that they can be documented and shared.

We also heard about a range of methodologies used at IRRI, from the rushed approach (produce a poster and send it out) to the more full list of "good practices" starting with audience research, baseline data, pre-testing, monitoring and review workshop (to name a few of the long list of steps). IRRI also recommends attracting policy makers to high profile launch event to elevate the profile of the communication program. The advantages of the "full process" as described are impressive.

The recommendation to document and quantify the benefits of the "full" Vs the "fast approach" is important. If the "espoused theory" is the "full (and more expensive) approach", then there may be scope for "in-between variations" where some of the steps are cut out, but where we still obtain some of the intended results.

We await more inputs and reactions to these important suggestions.

Ricardo

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odoinora1 · Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 3

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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High Profile launching

Yes. Dr K. L. Heong' elaboration about high profile launching is useful. Many times we set about launching a communication activity, as an individual activity, yet it could achieve more if it was tagged to another grand national occasion. If the occasion is co - funded by stakeholders, it could minimise time and costs.

Nora - Uganda

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Heong · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 2

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
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Nora:

High profile launching.

An important part of the planning process is to include a launching day. We often choose auspicious occasion, like World Environment Day, Earth Day, where dignitaries are willing to grace the occasion. For instance our Environmental Radio Soap Opera was launched on World Environment Day by the vice minister of agriculture in Hanoi. This is primarily a ceremonial occasion, with the press, TV radio, media invited. The purpose of holding such an activity is to elevate the profile and status of the communication program, create awareness to all, including general public, and cultivate local ownership, to include policy makers.

Hope this is useful.

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Chris Morry · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 314

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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Moderator's note: Ricardo asked me to forward this note with the attached article on ILEIA.

Dear Karen:

Thanks for your input to the forum.

As you may know I worked at ILEIA some time back. The attached article may already be familiar to you, and I wonder if/how much of the approach that we started turned out to be of use?

Ricardo

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karen712 · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 1

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

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Questions for week 1: What is your organizations' formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

The mission of ILEIA is "To increase the availability and exchange of information on low external input and sustainable agriculture, and contribute to poverty reduction through further development and promotion of sustainable agriculture." As such our core work is communication - and we do this through the LEISA Magazine where successful community based experiences on sustainable agriculture are presented. A lot of my job therefore means looking for these practical experiences, and encouraging those who were involved to write them up into an article. Our primary dissemination method is sending the magazine to subscribers - subscription is free for those in the South. What is not so well developed is our publicity strategy - we find the magazine is mostly promoted by word of mouth. On the production side, we have a carefully documented six month process for producing each magazine, which I will not bore you with here!

The bottleneck we found was that often, interesting experiences are not written or documented - so we have developed a step-by-step methodology for documentation/systematisation of experiences. This enables NGOs, farmers, extension workers, or anyone who is interested, to document their experience in order to learn from it and then share it. This implies a learning process where some analysis of the experience is key. A manual has just been published and can be downloaded at no cost from http://documentation.leisa.info/index.html Descriptions of how it has been used, as well as other efforts at documentation and communication can also be seen here in a recent issue of the magazine http://www.leisa.info/index.php?url=magazine-details.tpl&p[readOnly]=0 &p[_id]=80627 We are beginning a more active programme of documentation efforts and are now looking for organisations who would be interested in trying out this or other mehtods, with the aim of promoting better documentation and communication in general. I would be happy to answer any enquiries regarding this programme.

Karen Hampson
Editor/Researcher

ILEIA
Centre for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture
PO Box 2067
3800 CB Amersfoort
The Netherlands

Tel +31 33 467 38 77 email:
Fax +31 33 463 24 10 Web site: www.leisa.info

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a.ball · Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 1

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
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As part of the HarvestPlus Challenge program, we are starting our projects of Reaching End Users with Orange Sweetpotatoes in two African countries. Our communication strategy seems to include a mix of things. Due to time constraints in one country, we are looking at using materials (posters, slogans, radio programs) developed by other projects. We know that these materials went through audience analysis, pre-testing etc etc. Yet at the same time we also know that the materials were intended for a different part of the country. We have tested them again for the project area and are now sorting out which ones will work and which ones won't work. We will now start adding new materials that will be developed within the project area. How much short-cutting - and where - is still in question. We are also trying to add messages into other agric/health projects to build linkages and integrate messages. We look forward to hearing a newly developed radio soap opera; local theatre groups are another mode we are using.

In the second country, we have collected materials from other projects but it is unlikely that we will be able to use much partly due to the poor quality but also due to the cultural diversity of the areas of implementation. In this case, we will go through the process of audience analysis, baseline survey, message design, pretesting, material production etc, etc (much like the IRRI process). Posters, radio, theatre, wall murals (etc) will be developed "from scratch". But - time and money; money and time --- will we be able to pull it off?

A.M. Ball, HarvestPlus, Uganda-Mozambique

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odoinora1 · Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 3

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
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I find IRRI's methodology appealing especially regarding the after process of communication tool development. Is it possible for IRRI to elaborate on the high profile launching.

Thank you - Nora/Uganda

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rramirez · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 11

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
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We thank you for the first three inputs!

One emphasized the importance of responding to people's needs and incorporating folk media in rights based approaches. A second emphasized working with farmers and providing them with the tools to enhance farmer to farmer communication. Third, we heard about a range of methodologies used at IRRI, from the rushed approach (produce a poster and send it out) to the more full list of "good practices" starting with audience research, baseline data, pre-testing, monitoring and review workshop (to name a few of the long list of steps). The advantages of the "full process" as described are impressive.

The recommendation to document and quantify the benefits of the "full" Vs the "fast approach" is important. If the "espoused theory" is the "full (and more expensive) approach", then there may be scope for "in-between variations" where some of the steps are cut out, but where we still obtain some of the intended results.

We await more inputs and reactions to these important suggestions.

Ricardo

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Chris Morry · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 314

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

Moderator Note: This e-mail was sent from K.L. Heong but for technical reasons had to be forwarded to the discussion via the moderator.

Dear Chris

Forum question:
What is your organizations' formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

At IRRI we don't have a formal methodology in terms of the steps taken in planning, producing and disseminating information and communication products. It varies from some researchers making a poster, mass producing it and sending it to some audience, without audience analysis, pre testing etc to a multi stakeholder participatory process, beginning with stakeholder meeting, audience analysis, baseline survey, message design, pre testing, material production, high profile launching, materials distribution, monitoring management survey, post launch survey and finishing with a review workshop. This latter process has been used in our work on motivating farmers to reduce insecticides, use seeds, fertilizers and pesticides more efficiently, developing two radio soap opera series, one on IPM and the other on environmental issues. We kept this process in all our dissemination projects, by incorporating the process within the project. The difficulties encountered are mainly costs and time. Most of our colleagues at IRRI are not prepared to adhere to the process because they want "fast" actions. Their attitudes are that audience analyses are not necessary and pretesting redundant. One of the most powerful experience with using the "full" process we found has been cultivation of local ownerships, local understanding of the issues, actions, objectives and purpose, building commitments across stakeholders from policy makers to implementers, leveraging local support, in terms of labor as well as financing, increased opportunity for scaling out (for instance our project motivating farmers to use inputs efficiently, spread from one province to 13 others) as well as increased opportunities for policy support (the project on input use became a national agricultural policy). I think it is important to emphasize, document and quantify the benefits in using the "espoused theory" compared with "theory in use". Taking short cuts is very appealing, and perhaps there is also need to document, "what is lost" if short cuts are taken?

K.L. Heong

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odoinora1 · Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 3

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

Questions for week 1: What is your organizations' formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

We will be successful if we are able to identify the factors that enable them to reduce that gap.

Answer:

Mine is a research organisation. We are interested assisting farmers with their farming problems.

We interact a lot with farmers. As a routine, we facilitate farmers to identify their priority farming problem, and alternative solutions to the problem. Farmers identify solutions based on the information they possess.

Sometimes, we know the technology they recommend and we add onto it our own scientific information. Sometimes farmers do not know the whole correct information, and we know. So we add our scientific information to theirs. We facilitate farmers to implement the solution. Sometimes, the farmers recommend for a communication tool to be developed, for example a poster, a brochure etc. We facilitate the farmers to develop the recommended communication tool and pre - test it and finally we assist them with massive production of the communication tool. The communicaion tool is for the farmers, so we plan with the farmers how to share it with other farmers. We facilitate the farmers to share information with fellow farmers.

The problems that have been encountered in that methodology is when there is urgency to make farmers aware of a farming problem as soon as possible.

This works against farmers participation in the communication tool development. We try to overcome this handicap by working with a smaller representative sample of farmers.

Nora Naiboka Odoi
KARI - NARO - Uganda

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Mallick · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 1

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
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We in a our small organization TREE followed very simple step to planning and information disemination taht is when we initiate a prosess we try to need of the society. And of course some one desinate with the process. We then discuss the idea with our people in the organization bring their idea in mind formulte the project. We use folk media to our rights based project.

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Chris Morry · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 314

This is a contribution to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum. The forum is hosted by The Communication Initiative and moderated by evaluation and communication consultants Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry. For more details see:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?p=186564

Welcome to the ‘Impact of Disseminating Advocacy and Communication Materials’ discussion forum!

We are really looking forward to this discussion and want to thank all of you for joining us. This is week one of about three weeks of discussion so let's jump right in.

We want to start by asking a couple of questions:

What is your organizations’ formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

While you consider your answer let us give you a sketch of some of the thinking and objectives behind this discussion. We all know that “good practice” in communication strategy development is to involve users in the production of communication materials, and to tailor make communication materials to suit the media channels and preferences of each audience, but we also all know that “real world experience” is characterized by limited resources and trade offs. In the field of advocacy and information dissemination, many development agencies make compromises both in the production stages of materials and in their dissemination. Often times a single communication product or material is adjusted to serve more than one purpose. Furthermore, it is not rare to also then disseminate the materials without a baseline of information about audiences’ current levels of knowledge and skill. The contrast between the ideal “good practice” (as in the text books) and the “real world experience” is reminiscent of Chris Argyris’ reference to “espoused theory” (what we say we do) vs. “theory in use” (what we actually do). Argyris argues that the narrower the gap, the more coherent our work will be. This e-forum focuses on the following objectives:

a) To gather experiences from a range of development organizations regarding their “good practice” (and we expect many variations therein) both in terms of production and dissemination of information materials. On this same vein, to hear about how they are closing the inevitable gap between that idea, and their “real world experience”.

b) To hear about approaches in the testing stage and /or already in use to track the use of the materials. How are the communication strategy objectives worded? How are outputs, differentiated from outcomes, and form longer term impacts? How is the elusive challenge of limited causality addressed?

c) To gather accounts of successes and failures in the integration of communication objectives and audiences into communication materials.

We look forward to sharing this discussion space with all of you for the next three weeks and while we understand that discussions are not purely linear we will offer some structure by asking a different question at the start of each week.

Here’s this weeks’ question again:

What is your organizations’ formal methodology in terms of the steps you follow in planning, producing and dissemination information and communication products? What difficulties have you encountered in sticking to this methodology and how have you managed to keep to it?

We look forward to hearing from all of you,

Ricardo and Wendy

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