Sharing Impact

Planning for communications is both a science and an art — it involves analysis of stakeholders, audiences, objectives, and messages, followed by identifying the best tools to reach audiences. Our projects develop detailed communications strategies that allow them to deliver development results. Below we have a few examples of communications tools our projects have used to meet their goals and deliver development impact.

 

 

The USAID-funded Palestinian Authority Capacity Enhancement (PACE) project uses media campaigns to reach out to citizens. For audiences in the West Bank and Gaza, the project has worked with a prominent media company to design and produce a public outreach campaign to help strengthen public institutions and improve their services in order to increase citizen satisfaction. The campaign uses cartoon characters to deliver messages to the public through television episodes, radio shows, newspapers ads, and electronic media.

 

PACE hopes to change public perceptions on the quality of government services through building excitement for this campaign. For external audiences, PACE developed a project video which appears online (see below) and is an example of a larger objective where the project will deliver a steady stream of communications to internal and external audiences.

 

 

 

To promote public dialogue between citizen and government—still a relatively new idea in Mongolia— the Economic Policy Reform and Competitiveness project (EPRC) worked with citizens to equip them to participate in a dialogue about economic issues and with government agencies to improve their communications and openness to the public. The range of activities was broad: from the symbolism of citizens asking live questions of top national leaders on national television, educating journalists on economic issues and the workings of a market economy, to helping citizens understand mining and participate in its benefits.

 

The openness of Mongolian citizens and receptivity to new ideas were key factors in the success of project activities in this area. On the government side, the public education campaign during 2005-2006 to build a national consensus on tax reform showed initially skeptic government officials the benefits of openness and communications with the public. The prevailing mind set and culture of closed government agencies has begun to change and models of openness and service orientation have emerged, evidenced by the tax department’s program on customer service.