"This book includes 17 articles on the current state of communication for development from renowned communication practitioners and scholars. It covers five areas: an introduction to the relationship between development, participation and communication; the theoretical underpinnings of development c
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ommunication; the development communication strategies of international institutions like UNESCO, FAO and UNICEF; concrete experiences in HIV/AIDS communication and the concepts behind; and case studies on community media and media projects in conflict areas. The special value of this book is that the project examples are not just presented in a descriptive manner, but analyzed in detail according to the underlying communication concepts. In addition, various contributions trace the history of participatory communication approaches to development. This is a revised and updated version of a 2003 UNESCO publication called Approaches to Development: Studies on Communication for Development." (CAMECO Update 4-2008)
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"This evaluation of Andrew Lees Trust’s Projet Radio (ALT/PR) in Southern Madagascar examines the impact of radio broadcasts on audience knowledge and attitudes relating to certain MDGs. It finds that the project is achieving some notable success in changing and enhancing knowledge and attitudes o
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n topics including HIV/AIDS, family planning, mother and child health, environmental issues, social and administrative issues and gender inequality. Radio is also having a positive impact on uptake of health services, enrolment in literacy classes, construction of environmentally-friendly woodstoves, tree-planting, agricultural yields, and awareness of strategies for poverty reduction through incomegeneration and community associations. This evaluation looks at ALT/PR’s methods and organisation and finds many advantages to its particular three-way process of working. This involves radio stations, communities and local service-providers in a mutually advantageous partnership for the production, distribution and broadcasting of radio programmes. The provision of radio-sets to listening groups appears to be a very successful strategy, and our surveys show a high level of commitment and enthusiasm on the part of listeners, especially women. The ability of radio to scale-up and extend the on-the-ground work of local service-providers emerges quite clearly. Our study also looks at challenges that ALT/PR has tackled and, in some cases, is still facing. These are challenges involving management and networking in what is a particularly poor and disadvantaged area. The project still faces issues relating to ensuring its radio programmes are consistently and truly participative. Demand for its services is high and there is a risk of staff becoming over-stretched, particularly for senior management. ALT/PR is demonstrably cost effective and has a good local reputation, but fundraising continues to be a time-consuming preoccupation. ALT/PR is already tackling the major long-term challenge of sustaining the networking mechanism it has set up, and we highlight some encouraging signs of sustainability." (Abstract)
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"What is dialog, and how can it be measured in a meaningful way? In this article, Jacobson presents an approach to assessing participatory communication based on communication in the form of dialog as conceptualized by Jurgen Habermas." (Abstract)
"This paper is a peer review of journals addressing the issue of the impact of development communication in a number of development projects and programs. It provides an overview of this discipline and then discusses the evidence about the impact of development communication according to a typology
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developed on the basis of the articles reviewed. This study is part of a wider process that provided support to the First Congress on Communication for Development, an event that took place in Rome on October 2006." (Back cover)
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"The aim of this paper is to examine the role (both positive and negative) that communication plays in promoting good governance by analysing available evidence and highlighting specific case studies, evaluation reports and academic articles detailing the impact of communication on governance. The p
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urpose is to move beyond anecdote and conjecture, to review the evidence and provide a reliable basis for policies and programmes on communication for good governance. This paper is structured as follows: Section Two provides an analysis of the relationship between governance and communication. Section Three reviews the kinds of evidence available and warns about the difficulties of establishing a causal link. Based on available evidence, Section Four provides an overview of the role of communication in government capability, accountability and responsiveness using a range of empirical data (where available) but relying heavily upon peer reviewed case studies. Section Five concludes with a summary of findings about the role of communication in good governance and identifies the factors which can encourage or impede a direct causal link." (Introduction, page 2)
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"FilmAid International (FilmAid) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to use the power of film to promote health, strengthen communities and enrich the lives of the world’s vulnerable and uprooted populations. FilmAid offers programming that aims to facilitate social change by providing co
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mmunication tools, information, and opportunities for people to come together to explore, debate, and express ideas. Although other aid organizations have used film as a medium of change and instruction, unlike the FilmAid approach this has generally been ad hoc, irregular, and part of a wider program of interventions. The FilmAid approach is therefore unique and offers an opportunity to conduct a study of the impact of showing films to a refugee population. Apart from an evaluation conducted in 2003 of FilmAid’s own program in Kakuma, Kenya, the authors are not aware of any other formal assessments. Consequently, there is little known regarding the impact of the FilmAid program. Gaining knowledge on this subject will not only assist FilmAid in their operation of programs, but will also provide guidance for other organizations interested in using films as interventions. The purpose of the assessment reported here was to evaluate the impact of the FilmAid International program in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kakuma, Kenya. We used a three-phase approach employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. The assessment was led by an independent consultant assisted by faculty at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the staff of FilmAid." (Executive summary)
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"Los proyectos de desarrollo, en tanto acciones tendientes a poner en práctica los derechos humanos, requieren de intervenciones que tengan en cuenta la participación de las personas. Estos modelos participativos no pretenden únicamente lograr mejores resultados, sino convertirse en herramientas
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para el fortalecimiento de lo público, entendido como aquello que conviene a todos, para su dignidad. Lo público así entendido, necesita a su vez de una ciudadanía motivada y activa, capaz de crear cambios sociales cooperativamente. Ahora bien, nadie puede desear participar en lo que no conoce, por lo tanto, es impensable un proyecto de este tipo que no considere la dimensión comunicacional. Será necesario entonces que como comunicadores nos preguntemos: ¿Lograremos nuestros objetivos a través de proyectos que no tengan sentido para las personas implicadas? ¿Cómo llegar a poblaciones con diferentes culturas, diferentes contextos sociales, diferentes visiones de su “estar en el mundo”? Este segundo cuadernillo gira alrededor de estas preguntas, desde lo metodológico. Su objetivo fundamental es poner a disposición de los comunicadores herramientas de planificación que les permitan intervenir eficazmente en proyectos de desarrollo, cualquiera sea el rol que les toque desempeñar." (Presentación, página 7)
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"The study revealed important coverage by Project ‘Radio SIDA’ of the targeted populations. 89% of the population that was studied declared having heard about AIDS on the radio. Radio is clearly the most important source of information for both urban and rural populations. Given that 68% of the
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population also knew that the broadcasts were produced by ALT, it can be concluded that a large part of their knowledge about HIV originated from Project ‘Radio SIDA’. Knowledge about AIDS was impressive, and 75% of the population could quote blood and sexual relations as ways of transmitting HIV/AIDS, and 77% could quote both fidelity and condoms as means of prevention. More fundamentally, the Focus Group Discussions revealed that the broadcasts seem to have had considerable impact on the population’s belief in the existence of HIV/AIDS, given the characteristics of the region this is really quite a success. Project ‘Radio SIDA’ can congratulate itself for having considerably increased AIDS knowledge in the urban and rural populations of the Anosy and Androy regions after undertaking only two sub-projects that each lasted 7 months and only cost $25,000." (Executive summary)
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"Taking 14 radio serial dramas from around the world shows that many aspects of the way they are organised are not replicable: what works in one context would just not work in another. This is because of the very nature of pro-social media projects: they depend so much on the personal contacts of th
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e producers, and the specific needs and tastes of the target audience. A successful model for one country may well not work in another, simply because there are so many variables. Having presented this caveat, the following is a list of replicable features gleaned from the 14 projects studied. More detail about how these features work in practice can be found in each case-study. The features have been selected because they either show up strongly across all projects, have been singled out by project-holders as the key to their success, or because they seem to have the potential for translating across countries and sectors." (Recommendations, page 21)
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"The Academy for Educational Development (AED) has been in the social marketing, communication, and participation business for some 40 years. This book profiles 82 projects carried out in the 1960s and 1970s in countries around the world. These projects were researched and documented by AED under it
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s Clearinghouse on Development Communication. It is hoped that the book's profiles of extraordinary early experiments with social marketing, mass media, interactive radio, and participation might benefit a new generation of communication professionals. Profiles in the book describe applications to fields as diverse as basic education, child survival, family planning, agriculture, community organizing, and participatory media. The book opens with an easy-to-read index and a table of contents. Synopses of each project follow, providing a description, results, facts of note, references, target audience, objectives, media, donors/sponsors, duration, and contacts." (www.eric.ed.gov)
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"This reader is envisioned as a resource for policy-makers and project planners, providing an overview of Environmental Communication as a management tool for initiatives geared towards environmental sustainability. The authors hope that their articles will convincingly show why and how Environmenta
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l Communication should become an integral component of policies and projects, and thereby help ensure that adequate human and financial resources are allocated to this end. The idea for this book was born at an international workshop on "Communicating the Environment" organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Bonn, Germany in late 1996." (Preface, page 5)
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"To reshape the field of development communication, Redeveloping Communication for Social Change proposes situating theory and practice within contexts of power, recognizing both the ability of dominant groups to control and the potential for marginal communities to resist. Contributors from communi
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cation and anthropology explore the global and institutional structures within which agencies construct social problems and interventions, the discourse guiding the normative climate for conceiving and implementing projects, and the practice of strategic interventions for social change. Examining early and emerging models of development, power dynamics, ethnographic approaches, gender issues, and information technologies, they speculate how a framework accounting for power might contribute toward new directions and applications in the field. Instead of mourning the demise of development communication, this volume should provoke critical debate that will help us change our approaches to meet new challenges." (Publisher description)
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