Infoasaid

Internews and the BBC World Service Trust are partners in a DfID funded consortium focusing on improving how aid agencies communicate with disaster affected communities. The emphasis is on the need to deliver information, as aid itself, through the most appropriate channels ...more

CDAC

infoasaid is a collaborative project of two CDAC (Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities) members. CDAC’s central objective is to provide a coordinated service to enable humanitarian operations to get lifesaving information to affected populations and to channel their voices back to the providers of assistance working with local media and non mass media communications

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NEW EVENT: Beneficiary Communications in Haiti

July 07, 2011

Infoasaid and CDAC Network would like to invite you to a Brown Bag Lunch Presentation on Monday July 18:

Beneficiary Communication Practices and the Effectiveness of Cholera Communication Campaigns in Haiti

Date: Monday July 18, 13:00-14:30

Venue: Internews office in London

(32-36 Loman Street, London, SE1 0EH)

Speakers

Imogen Wall, independent humanitarian consultant and author of a report commissioned by infoasaid on beneficiary communication practices in Haiti: Haiti 2010: the communication challenge in earthquake, cholera and hurricane response (forthcoming).

Jennifer Mandel, PhD, Internews’ Deputy Country Director and Research Director in Haiti. Mandel was part of the initial response team to the Haiti January 2010 earthquake and will speak about: ‘Research on the Impact of Cholera Communication Campaigns in Haiti’.

Discussant

Randolph Kent, PhD, directs the Humanitarian Futures Programme at Kings College, London, where he and his staff have worked since 2006 with various multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental organizations at headquarters and in country offices to enhance their strategic and planning capacities for dealing with long-term humanitarian threats.

Chair

Rachel Houghton, Global Coordinator for the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network.

Refreshments will be available. There will also be an opportunity for Q&A as part of this event.

Please to of the CDAC Network on: by Friday 15^thJuly 2011.

EVENT OVERVIEW

The infoasaid report - Haiti 2010: the communication challenge in earthquake, cholera and hurricane response - to be released soon, aims at identifying and capturing lessons about the design, implementation and evaluation of communication strategies developed and deployed as part of the Haiti responses, both to the earthquake and to cholera. The report has gathered evidence, where possible, about the extent to which particular communications strategies enhanced the quality of humanitarian response. It also identifies and and captures lessons about how to drive change within individual aid agencies including at the global level in order to improve communication with the affected population.

The Internews' local research team led by Jennifer Mandel is establishing itself as an independent research firm called the Bureau de Recherches Économiques et Sociales Intégrées (BRESI), or the Office for Integrated Economic and Social Research (in English). The BRESI surveyed 1,400 people individually and 440 people in focus groups in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and in rural and urban areas, particularly where the November 2010 cholera outbreak was most severe. The cholera communication campaign consisted of specialized radio and television programs, SMS messages, billboards, and Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that were developed by the Haitian Ministry of Health with support from organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF or Action contre la Faim, to mention just a few, alongside CDAC Haiti. For more information on this research please read: For Haitians, Radio is Key Information Source on Cholera.

ABOUT PARTNERS INVOLVED:

infoasaid is a DFID funded consortium of two CDAC members, Internews and the BBC World Service Trust. The objective of this project is to improve how aid agencies communicate with disaster-affected communities. The focus is on providing humanitarian information. The emphasis is on the need to deliver information, as aid itself, through the most appropriate channels. infoasaid is providing the CDAC Network with financial and technical support to become a functional Network.

The CDAC Network brings together humanitarian and development agencies and media development organizations to integrate two-way communication, which includes information provision, into humanitarian preparedness and response in the areas of both policy and practice. Current members of the CDAC Network Steering Committee are: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP), BBC World Service Trust (BBWST), British Red Cross/Irish Red Cross, Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), International Media Support (IMS), infoasaid, Internews, Merlin, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), Save the Children, Thomson Reuters Foundation and UNFPA.

‘CDAC Haiti’ has been operational since January 2010 in response to the earthquake. For more information: www.cdac-haiti.org

Internews is an international non-profit media development organization working to improve access to information for people around the world by fostering independent media and promoting open communications policies. Internews' programs are built on the conviction that providing people with access to vibrant, diverse news and information empowers them to make their voices heard and to participate effectively in their communities.