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Eveline Herfkens, Founder of the UN Millennium Campaign, and Marina Ponti, Director for Europe, addressed a group of communication experts from European bilateral aid agencies and multilateral organisations. The workshop was jointly organised by the OECD, the Polish Government and the UN Millennium Campaign in Warsaw on 4-5 June.
Achieving the MDGs in times of crisis and changes was the overarching theme of the meeting, whose main objective was to equip communicators with tools that would enable them to adapt to such situations.
Eveline Herfkens contextualised the complex scenario we are facing today, in which rich countries are confronted with domestic economic and social challenges exacerbated by a global systemic crisis, requiring political support and financial resources.
Will the current economic downturn hamper progress already made towards achieving the MDGs? If development policy and development cooperation fail to achieve their goals, will the aid industry loose its credibility? Does this mean that communicators should scale down expectations now, or is this, on the contrary, the right moment to invest more in campaigning for the fight against poverty?
In response to these and many other questions raised during the two-day meeting, the Founder of the UN Millennium Campaign delivered an important message: “to hang on to the framework of the Millennium Development Goals.” The humanitarian imperative and the self-interest argument - “it is in our self-interest to act now” she added - should be underlined in our communication efforts as we highlight how much this crisis impacts on the achievement of the MDGs.
In her intervention, Marina Ponti, delivered a series of lessons learned, intended to serve as a set of tools for better communicating and campaigning on the MDGs. “ Every crisis brings opportunities: people are more prone today to listen and we – communicators – need to use this opportunity to address the challenges we are faced with.” The suggestions provided by Ms. Ponti can be summarised in 8 simple but interdependent ingredients: adaptation to the local context, mapping of national supporters, simplicity of the message, clear policy objectives, credibility, feedback to supporters, political will and advocacy space, and communication as instrument to obtain advocacy objective.
Achieving the MDGs in times of crisis and changes was the overarching theme of the meeting, whose main objective was to equip communicators with tools that would enable them to adapt to such situations.
Eveline Herfkens contextualised the complex scenario we are facing today, in which rich countries are confronted with domestic economic and social challenges exacerbated by a global systemic crisis, requiring political support and financial resources.
Will the current economic downturn hamper progress already made towards achieving the MDGs? If development policy and development cooperation fail to achieve their goals, will the aid industry loose its credibility? Does this mean that communicators should scale down expectations now, or is this, on the contrary, the right moment to invest more in campaigning for the fight against poverty?
In response to these and many other questions raised during the two-day meeting, the Founder of the UN Millennium Campaign delivered an important message: “to hang on to the framework of the Millennium Development Goals.” The humanitarian imperative and the self-interest argument - “it is in our self-interest to act now” she added - should be underlined in our communication efforts as we highlight how much this crisis impacts on the achievement of the MDGs.
In her intervention, Marina Ponti, delivered a series of lessons learned, intended to serve as a set of tools for better communicating and campaigning on the MDGs. “ Every crisis brings opportunities: people are more prone today to listen and we – communicators – need to use this opportunity to address the challenges we are faced with.” The suggestions provided by Ms. Ponti can be summarised in 8 simple but interdependent ingredients: adaptation to the local context, mapping of national supporters, simplicity of the message, clear policy objectives, credibility, feedback to supporters, political will and advocacy space, and communication as instrument to obtain advocacy objective.
| Attachment | Size |
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| TODAY’S CHALLENGES FOR DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION.pdf | 169.12 KB |
