Document(s) 3 of 10

Starting with communication needs

When planning communication strategies, many tend to take a very broad problem as a starting point (desertification, for example), and then to move right into planning communication activities (information sessions, awareness campaigns).

The result is that the target is often missed and, despite all the activities undertaken, the problem remains untouched. To avoid situations of this kind, we should start from the needs expressed by local communities and identify the communication objectives we want to achieve before undertaking specific activities.

Material needs and communication needs

Development needs can be categorized broadly between material needs and communication needs. Any given development problem and attempt to resolve it will present needs relating to material resources and to the conditions to acquire and manage these. However, we will also find complementary needs which involve communication: for sharing information, influencing policies, mediating conflicts, raising awareness, facilitating learning, supporting decision-making and collaborative action etc. Clearly, these two aspects should go hand in hand and be addressed in a systemic way by any research or development effort.

Participatory development communication puts the focus on the second category of needs and ensures that they are addressed, together with the material needs the research or development effort is concentrating on.

For example, in an initiative aiming to resolve water conflicts in a village, we will probably find a need for an improved access to water, and development initiatives are needed to address that need. At the same time however, we may find out that in order to find adequate solutions in the present context, we must first understand the reasons behind the conflicts, such as the time schedule for various categories of users or the conflicting needs of herders, women and farmers. Or we may find that villagers do not know how to set up or manage effectively a water management committee. Or there may be a need for the village authorities to advocate for more water access, such as the drilling of another well, to the national water program.

Identifying communication objectives in relation to the problem identified and the solutions which the community wants to experiment with, ensures that the activities will support the community's initiative.

In a community initiative aiming to manage collectively a forest, there may be material needs such as tools to cut wood, seeds to plant new trees, access to drinkable water, etc. and again development resources are needed to address those needs. At the same time, people must understand the necessity to manage the forest if they want it to survive, and be able to take into consideration the specific needs of different categories of users. There may also be needs relating to learning different techniques, or needs relating to the setting up of a community forestry management mechanism.

To identify such needs, it is not enough to ask the question directly in a community meeting. This work needs to be done with each group of participants, both those most directly affected by the problem and those who are in a position to help resolve it. Sometimes, needs will be identified not through direct answers from community members, but through an observation of the

different practices in use or by comparing the answers or lack of answers of the different groups.

Again, this identification of needs must be linked to the problem or to the goal identified previously and to the initiative to be carried out. The question which can guide us in this is the following: What do the different groups we are working with need in order to experiment with or implement a specific set of activities, which can help solve a specific problem?

Communication objectives

Communication objectives are based on the communication needs of each specific group concerned by a specific problem or a set of research activities. These objectives are identified and then prioritised. The final choice of objectives may be made on the basis of the needs that are most urgent, or those most susceptible to action. They are then defined in terms of the action which need to occur for the objectives to be achieved.

Generally, in the context of natural resource management, the objectives are linked to one or several of these communication functions: raising awareness, sharing information, facilitating learning, supporting participation, decision-making and collaborative action, mediating conflicts, influencing the policy environment.

An important aspect though is not to limit oneself to awareness-raising objectives. It may be important to raise awareness for a community management of a forest, or for a better community management of water resources. However, this objective should be accompanied by other objectives aiming to:

• develop a plan for such a management,
• set up a community mechanism to carry it forward and monitor it,
• learn specific forestry techniques (in the case of the first situation).

One question we may ask ourselves in identifying these objectives is the following: what are the results, (in terms of knowledge, attitudes, behaviour or problem-solving capacity) that each group of participants should be expected to achieve by the end of the initiative? Each of these results then constitutes an objective.

In this way, we will have a general objective, which defines the final results that we hope to accomplish, and more specific objectives relating to each of these results, which will serve as the basis for the activities to be undertaken.

It is best if these objectives can be set out in observable terms, because that will greatly facilitate subsequent evaluation. However, we should not overdo that.

For example, it may be very difficult to tell, at the end of a communication strategy for improving soil fertility, whether we have “reduced desertification risk”. It will be easier to ascertain whether the specific community groups with whom the communication facilitator worked understand the process of desertification as it takes place in their own setting, whether they are aware of appropriate protective measures, and have put one or more of these into practice.

But on the other hand, to be too specific may be as problematic as to be too general. It may be more appropriate to formulate an objective as “to facilitate the understanding of causes related to a water conflict problem in the community” than to formulate it as “75% of the community members will be able to identify five causes related to the water conflict problem in the community”. The latter would be a better formulation in the context of a class (pedagogical objectives) but is rather unproductive at the scale of a community.

Again, this planning exercise should be done with the participation of the various groups of participants and resource persons working with the initiative.

From communication objectives to communication activities

The next stage is to regroup the different objectives involving the same community groups and to consider the best way of supporting each group in achieving them. For each group of participants and for each objective, we should then ask ourselves what the most appropriate modes of communication are?

For example, if we want to work closely with women on water use, in many settings, it may be better to arrange first for a global meeting with husbands and wives to explain the intention, discuss the problem and then arrange for working exclusively with groups of women, than trying to isolate women for participation in communication activities.

It is on the basis of such strategic considerations that communication activities are then identified and ranked by order of priority.

It is particularly important at this point to be realistic about the feasibility issues and not to compile an endless list of activities that is too ambitious.

Document(s) 3 of 10