If you want to enter The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition, you’d better hurry up because the closing date is 30 April.
Here at Scriptoria, we think it’s a great idea - anything to keep international development at the forefront of public debate. It’s the second year The Guardian, one of the UK’s leading quality newspapers, has run the competition, which is sponsored by the UK government’s Department for International Development.
We were a little disappointed, however, to see that only writers resident in the UK are allowed to enter. Perhaps it’s a sign of these cash-strapped times, but considering how proud The Guardian is of its international readership (especially its website), we think the competition should be open to writers from around the world.
The problem with limiting entries to UK-based writers, even if some of them are originally from elsewhere, is that you inevitably end up with a view through a rich nation’s lens. Shouldn’t The Guardian be helping to build a cadre of quality journalists in developing countries prepared to speak the truth to authority?
We’ve been checking out the new website of CABI, a well-known organisation that applies scientific solutions to solve problems in agriculture and the environment, and it’s pretty impressive - just the type of clean, clear layout we like.The interactive map in the development and research section is really neat. It uses Google’s maps, so all you have to do is click on a location marker and up pops the CABI project at that location. Click on the Read More chevrons and a new window tells you all about the project in clear, easy-to-follow sections.
CABI has quite a pedigree; it celebrates its first 100 years this year and is still leading the way in its field. A good example that appealed to us on its home page is CABI’s use of an insect known as a psyllid. Following research by CABI, psyllids are to be released in the UK to combat the marauding Japanese knotweed, which has no natural predators in the UK and is causing havoc in waterways and gardens and damaging structures (yes, it can even bring down bridges).
All in all, the site is great for seeing what CABI is up to in different parts of the world and it gives a clear run-down of the microbial services and publications that CABI has on offer. To look for yourself, go to http://www.cabi.org.
Here at Scriptoria, we believe that clear messages are vital to good communications and repeating those messages whenever you get the chance really helps hammer home what you are trying to say.So, when developing communications strategies for DFID, we were thrilled to come across someone already practising what we preach. This head of department had brainstormed with his staff to come up with five key messages about their work, then everybody carried around print-outs of those messages in their wallets, handbags or pockets,to remind themselves of them in their everyday working lives.
Great story, I thought. I wonder if he still remembers those messages? Well, here’s the proof: eight years on, he could still summarise them and produced the well used sheets from his wallet as proof.
So, a top tip from someone it worked for - try the wallet trick (or the handbag trick). You could even try printing short messages on something the size of a credit card.
Last Saturday, more than 350 agricultural policy makers, farmers and scientists gathered at the University of Copenhagen to give their take on tackling climate change. Scriptoria worked on comms for this meeting, so we’ve been taking a special interest in this event in the Copenhagen calendar.
The group strongly endorsed the proposed target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a temperature increase of more than two degrees Celsius and it urged negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to recognise the vital role of agriculture in achieving this target.But the challenge facing the agricultural community is tough. To meet the needs of a population expected to reach nine billion by mid-century, farmers will have to nearly double food production without increasing their emissions. And across most of the tropics, there will be increasingly harsh and unpredictable growing conditions.
So funding and support are crucial. If agriculture is to feed the world and reduce climate change emissions, it needs substantial new investment across the entire rural food chain. The Copenhagen meeting said this investment must be transparent and accessible to all, especially farmers and their associations.
This is a message that we at Scriptoria have been proud to promote by creating a fresh-looking logo (see photo) for the group’s communications and designing a website for the event. A full statement of outcomes is available at www.agricultureday.org.
A lot of Scriptoria’s work revolves around climate change. And with the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen in December coming up fast, Scriptoria’s working with several organisations to tease out their messages and generally ensure that their good ideas are included in the complex climate change agenda that’s currently being put together.
One of the benefits of the job is that you get to meet a lot of interesting people. I recently found myself sitting in the back of taxi talking to Achim Steiner, for example - he’s the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t just find him to be extremely knowledgeable (something you’d expect from someone in his position). I also found him to be a very amiable, down-to-earth guy who talked a lot of sense - particularly about the importance of including agriculture in the upcoming negotiations.
Anyway you can hear a snippet of what he had to say in the interview below - well of course I had a tape recorder!
Well it’s coming up to midnight, but I was so impressed with what I just saw on TV, I had to blog it and share it with you. The Prince just gave a beautifully crafted and impressively delivered lecture on some of the key environmental and economic challenges which the world faces, and explored how they might be tackled in the future. He covered everything from biodiversity and sustainable agriculture to philosophy and the credit crunch. In nice accessible language, and to an audience of invited celebrities.
His lecture dealt with lots of the issues that we at Scriptoria hold dear - and many of which are usually only considered in this depth in closed meetings of experts. Many of the points raised by the Prince were, for example, also raised by Achim Steiner (head of UNEP) at a meeting of major donors I was invited to in Brussels last week. So it was huge pleasure to hear on national TV such a public figure getting those messages out to the public.
And top marks for the Prince’s comms team, who had already posted the transcript online to satisfy the needs of people like me who were inspired to get onto Google as soon as the credits started to roll.
The video below is something Scriptoria put together after visiting one of the Chars river islands in northern Bangladesh. This project (which has helped around a million people so far) is working with some of the poorest communities in the world, in areas where poverty is just as widespread and extreme as in Africa.
Problems on these islets range from the fact that the few assets families have tend to be swept away by yearly flooding, to the fact that many children are starving simply because what little food they do get does them no good because of the huge number of gut parasites that they carry. This problem can be solved by cheap and simple measures like de-worming them every 6 months or so with tablets that cost 3 pence each – an important issue in an area where many people only get to eat once every 2 or 3 days.
Communicating these kinds of issues is something that I thrive on, because I know that it’s really helping some of the poorest. So watch the video and let me know what you think.
Hi all, and again sorry for another extended leave of absence. I’ve just got back from overseeing communications at a UK Department for International Development workshop in Bangladesh. This was a really fascinating event as it brought together movers and shakers from the development world in Asia who are working on many important projects. These range from tackling climate change and its impact on the poor in India, to helping to improve the lives of ultra-poor people on temporary islands that form on large rivers in the north of Bangladesh.
Finding new and interesting ways to record the messages from the event was perhaps the most interesting part of the job for me – as I know it’s key to ensuring that the good work they’re doing gets taken up and continued, both by other governments and by international development agencies.
I also got the chance to visit one of the projects and get some communications work done in the field. More on this within the next couple of days – as by then Scriptoria’s team will have put together a short multimedia presentation/video based on this to take you on a trip around one of these islands and see the work being done there.
It’s been pretty quiet on this blog lately as I’ve been in Africa for the last couple of weeks helping a large UK government initiative to plan its communications strategy - I’ve literally just arrived back in the UK. This has been really interesting work, based around helping the state governments improve their efficiency as a way of tackling wide-scale poverty and providing key services like clean water.
I won’t write much here as I fly out to the Chars project in Bangladesh tomorrow. So, I’ll try and come back to this later once I have a little more time.
Last year a client asked me if I knew of a light-weight whiteboard that they could easily carry around with them when working in the field in Africa. I ummed and ahhhed a bit, but couldn’t suggest anything lighter than a foldaway aluminum one - which isn’t ideal. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question strangely enough - it’s come up a few times in training courses. So, I was really pleased to stumble across the new magic whiteboard recently.
This very light option comes on a roll of statically charged sheets - just tear one off and stick it to whatever surface is in front of you (as in the picture). And each sheet is wipe-clean and can be re-used 20 times. So, it looks like this could be a really good solution for trainers working in either the developed or the developing world who don’t want to lug heavy materials around. It’s certainly cheaper than paying the excess baggage to take a whiteboard out with you. The website is http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk and they’re for sale on the UK high street in Rymans, which is where I saw them (see http://www.ryman.co.uk/Magic-Whiteboard-0351010170.asp#).
If you want to enter The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition, you’d better hurry up because the closing date is 30 April.
