REPERTORY 3 - Vrinda' s Introductions to WIKI chapters
playlist on Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD229CF52091DBD22
1 . The Objectives of the project http://youtu.be/ag6ZWBtfaGc
We are a group of organisations, European and non-European, implementing a project that has been co-financed by the European Commission. This project is called EUGAD, European citizens working for the global agenda for development.
As part of this project, we have prepared and developed handbooks for you. The main aim of these handbooks is to facilitate opinion makers in informing their public better, making them more aware about the scope and challenges of development cooperation.
The handbook is continuously updated by the project partners on the wiki pages. The handbook is linked to the audio-visual documentation collected in the project channel on Youtube. Together, the handbook and the wiki comprise the knowledge resources that have been collected and shared to support individuals and organizations that work together to improve the communication climate among nations and peoples.
We have collected stories and experiences and have shared the lessons learned. We also collected and distributed tools that can help better understand development issues and to design and manage cooperation projects.
Our plan is not to give lessons or to teach but rather to share experiences. So, each handbook chapter has only a short introduction that presents a collection of testimonials, practices and tools that have been shared by the networks of the TVP partners. We really hope that we have been able to record and communicate the values of those who fight for the rights of the underprivileged and the sense of joy they experience while cooperating for justice and peace.
How this Manual has been written http://youtu.be/ag6ZWBtfaGc
This Handbook is constantly updated with the feedbacks and opinions of people who read the manual. You are really welcomed to contribute to it and participate.
Relevance of the action http://youtu.be/ag6ZWBtfaGc
Over the past years, public support for global actions against poverty has been declining. In order to understand this trend, the TVP partners decided to interview various stakeholders and experts working in development cooperation as well as the opinion makers, like educators, journalists and local government representatives. We discovered that the opinion makers are little prepared in terms of knowledge and communication skills to convey authentic messages in the most effective manner. They usually convey what they hear in the media and this is often negative observations. And they miss out the positive-impact stories.
The interviews revealed that although organized campaigns concerning world’s poverty do reach the public with touching slogans and images, these campaigns adopt is usually an advertisement-style rhetoric. The public has little faith in these campaigns since they appear to largely justify the business niche of the campaigner. So, the ability of these campaigns is limited in changing people’s perspectives and attitudes towards issues and difficulties that developing countries face except perhaps in the case of humanitarian responses to disasters and calamities.
The interviews also revealed that only few people are aware about the Millennium Development Goals, the most important commitment taken by the International Community to reverse grinding poverty, hunger and disease that affects billions of people across the world; to bring economic and social justice to the most deprived, marginalised and vulnerable populations across the world.
Besides ad hoc spaces that Millennium Development Goal agenda is able to capture in the media, it rarely gets mainstreamed into the regular news or educational programs. And although policy makers are quite vocal in supporting international development efforts, they are unable to make additional funds available for these efforts or even raise support among the public or to even change people's perspectives.
In response to these opinions and feedbacks we received, we developed a communication approach that would facilitate the opinion makers in educating, informing and communicating their public about development issues. At the heart of our approach is our desire to empower the opinion makers rather than to reach out to the citizens directly through an advertisement-style campaign. While building awareness about the eight Millennium Development Goals, we also collected, developed and produced resources and tools that opinion makers could use in informing their public.
We interviewed the staff of organisations that receive funds and implement projects. We also met people who benefited from these projects and we collected their stories. We also wanted to understand the development paradigm they believe in; the challenges they face and how they address these; the successes they achieved and why; the dynamics amongst the various stakeholders and institutions that lead development processes and communicate it to the public.
How Videos have been produced http://www.facebook.com/pages/EUGAD/211965065353
The videos are a result of a collective effort. They narrate stories and record interviews of people working in cooperation projects. They have been shot together with actors and beneficiaries working on the ground. The original videos are uploaded on TVP project channel Youtube and are freely available as resources for institutions, organisations and individuals who would like to utilise these for informing their audiences. The videos contain interviews with representatives of European and other donor country governments. The footage has largely been collected in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East in collaboration with the network partners there and in particular with the Kautilya Society in India and Armadilla in Italy.
These videos have been recorded by the News Section of RAI 1, the prime channel of the Italian State Television. This News Section is called TG 1. The colleagues of TG 1 were given the opportunity to freely edit these videos. These videos have been broadcast on the TV7 programmes of RAI 1 and on the TG1 Speciale of RAI 1. We have shared these videos also with educators and opinion makers so that they can create their own independent product and use it freely to inform their audiences. And we also used the videos to stitch and weave together the stories into a documentary.
So, you can either use the videos interactively, i.e., choosing the stories of the interviews you are most interested either from the list of the interviews or from the Manual Chapters on the wiki pages. Or you can also see the stories woven together in the documentary format.
Besides the reportage in the videos on the development issues, we have also shown how we documented the stories we have woven together in the documentaries. In many of the videos, you see the "backstage", i.e. the team doing its work, their debates and discussions, and their approach. The back-stage largely focuses on the "interpretations" they make and the work they do in order to integrate the various viewpoints. The "front-stage" instead shows the facts: i.e. the activities being undertaken in pursuit of the 8 Millennium Development Goals that have been illustrated in the 8 episodes of the documentary. The constant shifting from the analysis of the specific MDGs to the larger project issues, i.e. from the front-stage to the back-stage of the project allows the unfolding of a “story”; the story of how the team faced the challenges in pursuing its mission and in articulating the pluralistic and dialogic approach required in communicating with a cross-cultural audience.
Journalists, along with teachers and policy makers, are the main beneficiaries of TVP.
In order to understand their needs, we interviewed them extensively. And in
order to understand their responsibilities and challenges, we worked together
with them for the production of the videos.
During the course of implementing the project and making the media products, it
became clearer that the international communication climate is shaped by the way
journalists report the news about international agendas. It became ever clear
that journalists are actors and not just spectators. And that no actor is ever
"objective", since personal interpretation and articulation is central to news
reporting.
On the ground, we have seen that the impact of projects depends as much on how
tasks are implemented as on how actions are communicated. We collected many
stories indicating that communication is the most important determinant of the
success or failure of all cooperation activities. But journalists tend to have
difficulty in acknowledging their moral and political responsibilities, hiding
them under the self-framed justifications of "professional neutrality". We
started by covering the activities undertaken within international cooperation
initiatives but gradually we became ever more interested in the activities of
journalists and opinion makers. The TVP documentary finally found itself
focusing as much on communication as on cooperation. It became a reportage on
how ways in which people communicate determines the ways in which people
cooperate; and vice-versa.
Communication is an art rather than a science. And as an art, there is no guaranteed formula that once proven successful, can be repeated with the same success an indefinite number of times. We however know the power of social media in linking peoples and communities. And the efficacy of linking visual and written communication, virtual and physical communities, local and global commitments.
There is increased sense of tiredness about a kind of destructive journalism always searching for bad news, and nurturing a global climate of fear and mistrust. But media that lives on advertisement sponsors or political patronage is forced to continue riding the usual stereotypes even if these stereotypes contribute to building barriers and spreading a culture of fear and disillusion. The real news now is how difficult and important it is to narrate “good news”. And the most challenging communication adventure is to narrate the reasons why MDGs, the most important commitment taken by the International Community to reverse grinding poverty, hunger and disease that affects billions of people is so little known. This is mainly because the international communication scenario is largely shaped by the way journalists report news on international agendas. They tend to reinforce “stereotypes” about poverty and communicate about it in a “catastrophic” tone. They often claim that they do not tackle issues and challenges of cooperation stories on-the-ground because such topics do not sell on media channels. This is also because organisations working in development cooperation often communicate in advertisement-style rhetoric. The public has little faith in such organised communication campaigns that largely tend to justify the campaigner. The ability of these campaigns is limited in changing people’s minds about supporting developing countries in addressing issues and challenges they face. By choosing to move out of the rhetoric box and share news of why peace building does not have access to the news, we now have an opportunity to set a different communication agenda. And this difference has the possibility of making a communication impact. Especially, since we, the people of this new millennium, so rich in media tools and so poor in communication content, greatly need this communication impact to happen.
Development Assistance as Social Education http://www.facebook.com/pages/EUGAD/211965065353
"Change" is a key term for those who work in international cooperation. A specific "change" is always the intended objective of a cooperation action. Development workers always ask themselves and the project stakeholders the question: how can we produce a change? What kind of "change" do are they looking for?
To build a school where earlier there was no school is relatively easy. But how can one bring in dialogue where earlier there was rhetoric and mistrust? How is it possible to induce a cooperative climate where earlier there was conflict and competition and exclusion? Is it possible to change human relationships from a zero sum game to a positive sum game?
Those who work in International cooperation say that the change they want to induce in the people they assist is not a transformation of their values; it is not a conversion. On the contrary, they want their project beneficiaries to be better able to choose in accordance with their values. For development workers, development assistance is empowerment. Like educators do for individuals, development workers do for communities.
Development workers help in "leading out" human potentialities. And using the famous words of Socrates, they act as midwifes in assisting women to deliver. Development actions are therefore a concrete form of social maieutics.
All cooperation projects run the risk of being implicit or explicit forms of coercive socialization aimed at making the counterparts abandon their values and adopt the values of their masters. But these cooperation projects also bring along with them new opportunities for education when they are authentic, i.e. a service given to the beneficiaries with the objective of enlarging the horizons of opportunities, possibilities and choices.
Whenever we have a "community" that is the intended target of "social change", we always run the risk of imposing values that are alien to these community. This risk is particularly high when the target community comprises of marginalized and voiceless persons; and the educator is acting on behalf of more powerful and richer communities, as is usually the case with development assistance projects.
Development experts take a number of mitigation measures against potential risks based on dialogue processes that enable people to participate in all steps of planning, implementing and evaluating development actions. These are risks that educators know they face in their job of trying to make others adapt to their pre-determined plans rather than as an education, enabling people to lead out their human potential in harmony with their own values.
Nurturing the will to choose - http://www.facebook.com/pages/EUGAD/211965065353
Assisting the development of others is based on the capacity to value the possibility of others in making choices that are free. It is for this reason that we must create the conditions in which beneficiaries are able to choose what they value. In other words, we must contribute to creating that enabling environment in which stakeholders participate, collaborate and dialogue in an informed and constructive manner.
What is an enabling environment? An enabling environment is a set of interrelated conditions, like legal, fiscal, social, political, organizational, information, that contribute to a macro framework which impacts on the opportunities and the capacities of development actors to fulfil their roles and responsibilities efficiently and engage in development processes in an sustained, informed and effective manner.
But it is more than that: it is nurturing in them the will to choose, i.e. the determination of recognizing the value of one’s identity and the determination of standing up for one’s own rights.
Human Rights and International Cooperation
Why should we help others to recognize and stand up for their own rights? Why do we need to help them to nurture their freedom? Well! It is because we recognized and stood up for our rights and we acknowledge that freedom brings along with it responsibilities; responsibilities for the freedom of others.
Through international cooperation projects, we acknowledge the fact that we need communities to be freer and more responsible towards sharing the world’s common resources in a more responsible manner towards present and future generations. We want a global partnership for development because we acknowledge the fact that by decreasing conflict and decreasing ignorance, we all stand to win; and by more conflict and more ignorance, we all stand to lose.