| CFSC Consortium Body of Knowledge |
Are you looking for articles, books, essays, journals or reports on communication for development and social change? Is your interest HIV/AIDS, human rights or rural development? No matter what your issue, as long as it deals with communication for social change, you should be able to find useful references in the Body of Knowledge, the CFSC Consortium’s searchable database.
The body of knowledge has more than 3,000 references from around the world now registered. We invite you to consult the database for your use. And we encourage you to submit any reference you consider relevant to helping our database continue to grow. |
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| Inviting Guest Contributors |
Do you know of interesting examples of successful applications of communication for social change principles within your community or country?
Mazi is looking for good case stories of CFSC at work: illustrations of the process of dialogue leading to community decision-making, action, implementation, monitoring, assessment and evaluation. We’re especially interested in examples of how communication processes have been strengthened or established at a community level by people who have been traditionally marginalised.
Help all of us build a better understanding of the many and varied ways that public dialogue leads to community decision-making and action. Describe for us where it takes place and why. Explain how CFSC is working. Inspire us all by telling us your community’s story.
Please e-mail your contribution of at least 250 words to mazi@communicationforsocialchange.org
Please make sure your story includes the CFSC elements: catalyst or catalytic event, problem identification, dialogue, decision-making, community action, monitoring and evaluation, and assessment of change at the individual and societal levels. Include your name, phone number, fax (if available) and email address.
The facts of all submissions will be verified. Once verified, they may be included either in Mazi or on the Consortium’s Web site. |
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| Inviting Artistic Images, Songs, Poetry Showing CFSC In Action |
Mazi invites your original images showing communication for social change in action. Whatever your medium—photography, painting, sketches, mosaics, murals, songs or dances—if you have an image showing people working together to give everyone a voice—we will consider publishing it in our online magazine. Unfortunately, we are unable to return your submission. We also reserve the right to crop and/or edit your work for style and content. Each creator will be credited online for his or her submission.
Please e-mail your contribution to mazi@communicationforsocialchange.org |
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| Please Support Us |
Your tax deductible contribution to the Communication for Social Change Consortium will be used to support our work in a number of areas including HIV and AIDS globally and in Africa and the United States, polio communication, communication for empowerment, case story development and evidence gathering, participatory monitoring and evaluation, publications and research, Body of Knowledge and curriculum development and training.
All contributions made are fully tax deductible in the United States to the full extent of the law. The Consortium is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organisation working throughout the world.
To make a donation online, please click here. Or, contributions can be mailed to: CFSC Consortium, 14 South Orange Avenue, Suite 2F, South Orange, NJ 07079. We can accept bank drafts or cheques in U.S. dollars, British sterling, euros or South African rand.
Thank you for your support. |
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Can there be a Happy New Year as Haiti Cleans Up?
Message from Denise Gray-Felder |
| With the world's citizens reeling from the disaster in Haiti, Denise Gray-Felder, CFSC Consortium president, wonders about the relevance of personal commitments at the beginning of a new year. |
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Becoming Visible: CFSC and Cameroon's Public Conversations
by Lourdes Margarita A. Caballero |
| To help the global initiative known as aids2031 identify future AIDS challenges and the kinds of leadership necessary to meet those challenges, the Consortium has facilitated a series of public conversations. In the African nation of Cameroon, these public conversations–involving men who have sex with men, wealthy, educated women and commercial sex workers–preceded a live national radio broadcast of a panel discussion about the realities of preventing and living with AIDS.. In this article, Consortium research associate Lourdes Margarita A. Caballero shares what we heard from people who typically have no voice in their country's national response to HIV/AIDS. She also shares with MAZI readers how communication for social change can help strengthen the response to the pandemic. |
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Inviting—Not Requiring—Social Change
by Karen Greiner and Arvind Singhal |
| In this essay, Karen Greiner and Arvind Singhal explore two successful programmes using communication for social change—one in Senegal and the other in the United States—that invite people to be agents of their own development, to be the change they wish to see. Karen Greiner is a doctoral candidate in the School of Communication Studies, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, United States. Her interests include creative communication and social change. Arvind Singhal is the Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Endowed Professor in the department of communication, University of Texas, El Paso, United States, where he also directs the Social Justice Initiative. A longer version of this piece recently appeared in the Journal of Development Communication under the title "An Invitation to Social Change." |
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Continuing the Struggle for Social Justice
by Dayna Cunningham |
| CFSC Consortium executive board member Dayna Cunningham was formerly a civil rights attorney working for voting rights in the Southern United States. Now, as director of the Co-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she advocates for community voice, participation and policy change as strategies to move people out of poverty and to reinforce strong communities. Cunningham recently worked with Consortium staff on ways to help strengthen community engagement in public schools of the Mississippi Delta region of the United States. This region remains "de facto segregated" due to social patterns that have been in place in Mississippi for decades. One result is that Black students and their parents in some of the school districts of this region feel voiceless, powerless and overlooked. They question whether public school children of the Mississippi Delta are receiving the best possible education they deserve.
Cunningham reflects on the merger of her past civil rights work in the South with today's realities in this letter below. |
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Photo Essay: Public Conversations in Cameroon About AIDS
by Denise Gray-Felder with Dominique Kondji Kondji and BCH Africa Staff |
The Communication for Social Change Consortium retained BCH Africa to plan and implement a series of public conversations in Cameroon about the future of AIDS in their country and the challenges of managing AIDS on a long-term basis. The Consortium also implemented public conversations for the aids2031 initiative in Mexico City, San Francisco and Dakar, Senegal in 2008. This work was part of, and funded by, the aids2031 global initiative aimed at helping the world be better prepared for living with AIDS in the future. The CFSC Consortium led the communication working group of the aids2031 initiative.
This issue of Mazi includes a story by Lourdes Caballero on the Cameroon dialogues. We have also included a recap of the recommendations of the aids2031 Communication Working Group with a list of the members of that group.
The Communication working group also produced a series of papers and research efforts including FutureConnect, a look at how social networking impacts the way young people communicate about AIDS. Readers can download a copy of FutureConnect from the CFSC Consortium website (www.cfsc.org) or by downloading here. Paper copies can be ordered beginning in February 2010.
Current plans are for the final report of the aids2031 initiative—including the comprehensive recommendations based on input from the nine working groups: communication, social drivers, programmatic response, financing, science and technology, countries in rapid transition, hyper-endemic countries, leadership and modelling—to be released August 2010 in conjunction with the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.
"AIDS is not over: Long-term progressive leadership is needed to change the face of the epidemic by the year 2031," says Peter Piot, former executive director of UNAIDS and now director of the Global Health Institute at Imperial College in London.
Additional information on aids2031 can be found on their website: www.aids2031.org |
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| Recommendations from Communication Working Group to aids2031 Agenda for the Future |
aids2031, a global initiative working to better prepare the world to manage AIDS for the long-term, is nearing completion of its work. Each of the nine working groups has submitted its recommendations and research papers.
The Communication for Social Change Consortium led the communication working group for this initiative. This group looked at how AIDS communication was financed, the particular communication needs of people exposed to chronic violence, the evolution of AIDS communication and the impact of social networking on how young people form their sexual identities. We also used CFSC approaches to sponsor public dialogues in four countries in order to better understand key public concerns about managing AIDS as a disease that will be around for at least another 25 years.
The report that follows, written by Communication Working Group member Magda Walter, a communication strategist and consultant, compiles the input of all the working group members into a set of recommendations to the broader aids2031 steering committee. It is our intent that some of our communication thinking will inform the final aids2031 report, which is to be released around August of this year in conjunction with the International AIDS conference in Vienna.
Readers who are interested in contributing their ideas about AIDS communication to the aids2031 effort can do so in several ways:
Submit ideas via the cfsc information box: info@cfsc.org
Visit the aids2031 website or look for aids2031 on Facebook and My Space.
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| CFSC Consortium and UNDP Oslo Governance Centre Partner to Address the Communication Needs of Poor People |
| For nearly three years, the CFSC Consortium has been working as an implementing partner with UNDP Oslo Governance Centre on its Communication for Empowerment initiative in three countries of Africa and two Asian nations. Funded in part by the United Nations Democracy Fund, this innovative trial has revealed several valuable lessons about how people living in poverty view their communication opportunities and information needs. It has allowed the Consortium to test our theoretical views in challenging real-life circumstances, making our practice more grounded and effective. In this piece, excerpted from the final report of the Communication for Empowerment project with UNDP OGC, Consortium President Denise Gray-Felder also reflects on the opportunities for large aid agencies to work most effectively with smaller, more nimble NGOs. |
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Exclusive Special Preview for Mazi Readers
Communication for Social Change Anthology: Historical and Contemporary Readings Excerpts from the English and Spanish Versions |
The Communication for Social Change Anthology is the first-ever collection of historical and contemporary readings on the subject of communication for social change. With 150 contributors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific Region and North America, this is essential reference for universities and research centres. The anthology—now available in Spanish as well as English—is a practical, comprehensive and definitive guide to the critical role communication plays in helping people make positive changes in their lives and their communities.
To order Spanish version, click here
To order English version, click here
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| Useful Links |
For People Working in HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support
The Soul Beat Extra: HIV/AIDS updates you on communication and HIV/AIDS related programme experiences, evaluations, research results and resource materials recently placed on the Soul Beat Africa website. SB Extra: HIV/AIDS complements The Soul Beat newsletter through a specific focus on HIV/AIDS. If you would like to receive this free e-publication, subscribe to The Soul Beat (through the free registration process) and indicate interest in HIV/AIDS. See:
http://www.comminit.com/en/user/register/38
For additional resources, visit Soul Beat Africa's HIV/AIDS Theme site. See:
http://www.comminit.com/en/africa/hiv-aids.html
Evaluating the Results of a UNICEF Programme in West Africa
The January 12, 2010 issue of the medical journal The Lancet reported the results of a study evaluating a $27 million (U.S.) UNICEF programme in West Africa. According to the Johns Hopkins University study, the Accelerated Child Survival and Development programme, which aimed to reduce child mortality in 11 countries by at least 25 percent by the end of 2006, didn't achieve its goals. The study said children not covered by the UNICEF programme were more likely to survive past age five than children who were covered by the programme. However, according to Panos London's online report, UNICEF defended the programme, saying it had helped raise overall government health standards. See:
http://www.panos.org.uk/
Thinking Systematically About Change
The Web site capacity.org currently features a comprehensive overview of systems thinking. Author and systems thinking expert Bob Williams urges those interested in capacity development to "apprentice yourself" with someone who knows systems thinking instead of studying the field in isolation. Williams says we should look at organisations, and networks of organisations, that are systemically embedded in, and connected to, a much wider context. The goal: Improve our understanding of the many complex factors influencing the abilities of people, organisations and institutions to achieve positive social change. See:
http://www.capacity.org/
Making Sure Those Wanting to Help Haiti Have the Right Motives
How will today's actions help rebuild Haiti? How can we ensure the long-term survival of Haiti's institutions, its future growth and its ultimate role on the world stage? According to author J. Phil Thompson's article "Haiti Should Beware the Well-Intentioned" on the Web site the Root, we have learned valuable lessons from experience in Katrina, the hurricane that devastated the American city of New Orleans. Those lessons include: Well-meaning outsiders cannot be allowed to strip the country of its local capacity or ignore local knowledge. For more, see:
http://www.theroot.com/
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