Appendix 1: Recommendations from the three Working Groups

Recommendations from Working Group 1: Communication and Natural Resource Management

Introduction

The Isang Bagsak (IB) experience, in enabling people to become drivers of their development through Participatory Development Communication (PDC) and Natural Resource Management (NRM), presents evidence of the importance of PDC in development taken in a holistic context.

General recommendation

We recommend sustaining the IB community of practice as an avenue for continued exchange and collaboration in PDC training, research and evaluation and other PDC initiatives. PDC is a process that is used for developing local involvement, resolving issues, identifying problems and solutions, and sharing knowledge and information

Preconditions

• Human resources – implementers with knowledge of the local culture, expertise in PDC, and content, commitment and motivation.
• Physical resources – interactive tools, both indigenous and introduced; minimum physical resources to facilitate the process.
• Sociocultural preconditions – there is a mandate and clear expectations of implementers, the community and other stakeholders and an enabling environment that allows the PDC process to enfold.
• Time – needs to be considered from the perspectives of implementers, donors and local participants.

Recommendations for training

We recommend instituting experiential, value based, culturally sensitive, collaborative/interactive, inclusive and empowering training in PDC based on the IB principles for the following stakeholders: decision-makers, media specialists, communication, training and education institutions and communities.

Recommendations for research

We recommend research must address how to achieve and sustain both the process of participation and the outcomes/impact of participation. This requires:

• A shared framework describing PDC processes and effects
• Community involvement in design, implementation and dissemination

We recommend PDC research utilization and dissemination must address:

• What is generalizable and what is unique
• How access to publication outlets can be increased
• Who owns the rights to publish.

Recommendations for scaling-up

We recommend PDC should seek to maximize involvement and collaboration of a multi-stakeholder environment to support local development.

We recommend scaling up the process with drivers of development based on impact assessment and improve methodology to influence practice and policy at every level.

Action Plan

• Support power and stakeholder analysis, conflict management and provide a forum to bring stakeholders together.
• Share impact assessment results with government and approach government through PDC.
• Form an international working group to compile and refine tools for the research and evaluation of the PDC process and impact, and develop training programs, materials and systems for participatory research and evaluation.
• Engage the support of donors and policy-makers for research, research training, research dissemination and publication.
• Train PDC trainers/facilitators, people at the grassroots level, media specialists and decision-makers.
• Develop and refine PDC tools, methods and materials advocating PDC.
• Integrate PDC into existing communication, NRM and other technical curricula.
• Align PDC and donor requirements.
• Include PDC in project formulation.

Recommendations from Working Group 2: Communication for Isolated and Marginalized Groups

Common characteristics of isolated and marginalized groups:

• Poor, lacking economic resources
• Live in isolated areas (remote rural areas, urban slums, mountains etc.)
• Unemployed or self-employed
• Illiterate or semi-illiterate
• From minority ethno-linguistic groups
• Possess different customs and practices
• Powerless to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives
• Victims of violence, war, drugs, HIV/AIDS and diseases
• Speak minority languages
• Possess other characteristics (disabled, women, youth, aged etc.)

Obstacles and constraints

• Lack of public awareness
• Lack of indicators, evidence and measurements of impact
• Lack of “scaling-up”
• Issues related to Participatory Development Communication practice (PDC)
• Training needs for PDC practitioners
• Institutional obstacles (UN, donors, governments etc.)
• Lack of funding
• Structural obstacles
• Sustainability issues

Governments: context

Governments have committed themselves to the MDGs. We are not going to meet the MDGs unless all actors recognize that communication with the poor is key to meeting them. More importantly, this is the principle identified by poor people themselves.

Current government policies and trends are making the voices of the isolated and marginalized even more isolated and marginalized.

Recommendations to Governments:

1. Create a plural information society

• Create space for debate – shaped by civil society, private sector and media – on how to open up channels for the poor and marginalized and not ignore – or attempt to control – their voices.
• Support transition from state to public broadcasting as an urgent priority.
• Define the role of the national broadcaster.
• Set up independent media regulators.
• Remove barriers to self-expression in the media, so that linguistic and cultural diversity can be expressed in a freer media.
• Create a supportive regulatory environment.

2. Support the voices of isolated and marginalized groups

• Provide a platform for their voices to be heard e.g. support community radio.
• Encourage media to reflect the voices of the poor and marginalized so they can be heard by the government and publics.
• Initiate consultative processes that include marginalized groups.
• Support community-based organizations that can be vehicles for community self-expression.
• Recognize different tools for cultural self-expression.

Recommendations to communication practitioners:

• Recognize that people are partners not objects.
• Create opportunities for people to generate and distribute their own materials.
• Raise awareness of people's rights to express themselves.
• Build capacity for community-owned media, in partnership with local media, NGO, professionals and local authorities.
• Increase knowledge-sharing among all practitioners using ICT tools.
• Train to become better communicators and facilitators.
• Improve advocacy with decision-makers.
• Get feedback from the ground on projects using detailed surveys and thorough evaluation.
• Improve sustainability of projects.
• Build evidentiary base for decision-makers in donor, development agencies and governments: this should include general principles, case studies and generic indicators – especially in relation to scale.
• Set up a task force to carry out this work by the World Bank meeting September 2005 (Rome) and WSIS 2 (Tunis).

Recommendations to donors and development agencies:

• Make Communication for Development a critical component in meeting MDGs.
• Set up specialist Communication for Development units.
• Promote the importance of this work within their organizations.
• Promote Communication for Development with other donors/agencies.
• Provide adequate M&E funding (both for programs and general good practice).
• Establish a “good development donor” initiative.
• Donors pressure governments to help build national policies, e.g. deregulation of media. Greater coordination and development of coalitions will help apply this pressure.

Recommendations from Working Group 3: Communication for Development in Research, Extension and Education

Development communication in Research, Extension and Education is:

• A two way process – is about people coming together to identify problems, create solutions, the poorest being empowered.
• About the co-creation and sharing of knowledge.
• Involves all stakeholders, identified by mapping the local context from the beginning.
• Indigenous knowledge plays a key role and should be given profile.
• Local context is key.
• Communication which contributes to sustainable change for the benefit of the poorest.
• Focus on agriculture, central for rural development, as part of livelihoods approach.
• Success is dependent on having an enabling environment.
• DevComm in Research, Extension and Education uses money and time in the short term but pays off in the longer term.

Key challenges

Dominant models do not provide desired outcomes in the longer term

Challenges are old but environment is new with key changes being active role of private sector, decentralization of many services, new opportunities for application of ICTs, agricultural services reform, farmer organization development, social pro-poor extension, non-production-oriented extension

A number of successful examples exist including AKIS but these are small-scale

Making the links between:

• Research, extension, education.
• Local- national-international in globalized world.
• Organizations/institutions also at local to international levels.
• Effective linkages which give voice to the poorest and ability to engage with policy, influence decision-making.

Successful examples

• Communication radio for mobilization in southern Africa.
• Ghana – Agricultural knowledge centres at district level.
• Participatory approaches linked to GIS.
• Romania – stakeholder meeting at the beginning of the process.
• Uganda – competitive grants with assessment criteria including demonstrated involvement of all stakeholders, including farmers, govt., private sector, NGOs
• Burkina Faso.
• Bangladesh “Communications Fair” and district level policy engagement group.

Recommendations when scaling up

• Bring field successes to the attention of policy-makers and donors.
• Pay attention to changing attitudes and profiles at all levels of the system – links with education systems.
• Subject matter specialists should understand DevComm and have communication skills.
• Communication specialists (e.g. media) should understand DevComm and their potential role.
• Pay attention and catalyse organizational/institutional changes.
• Political context key, needs political will, seek opportunities.

Recommendations to practitioners and donors

There is a need for:

• Participatory baseline formulations, including communication needs assessments.
• Multidisciplinary approach in communication from beginning.
• Include and allow flexibility for participatory planning and decision-making.

Recommendations to the UN

• Recognize that DevComm is essential to achieve impact in rural development.
• Call for National Governments to implement a legal and supportive framework favouring the emergence of a pluralistic information system.
• Set up an interagency group to:

• Analyse communication experiences (success and failure) in RExE.
• Develop a framework and a process which can and is implemented in all contexts.
• Develop a common approach to identify indicators of success linked to existing indicators (MDGs, PRSPs).
• Verify present status of rural education, linking hard and soft sciences (including higher education).