CASE STUDY : Participatory Communication in indigenous health development

Participaroy communication in an African indigenous group

Case Study
This is a Focus Group Study done in Nepal and Australia regarding the health issue of indigenous people. The project has been conducted on basis of referring some previous works done, like Vitamin A Program, which was previously held in Nepal and Australian aboriginals carried out with a Government Nutrition Program.
Participatory Communication enhanced by Focus Group Discussion was found to be the most effective option for involving the indigenous people in Health development Programs. Effective both-way communication system was highly favored in Australian indigenous participants when in Nepal the Focus Group has been designed from a prior Communication Research Project, carried out before.
In Nepal the indigenous people has formed a voluntarily workable participatory team, consisting both males and females from the village, where in Australia the participatory volunteer team only having males in their team which has a lacking on their outcome of not having the viewpoint of aboriginal women.
In both of the cases the focus group participatory members were burnt with some common phenomenon, like: how issues arise in Community Participatory Experience and Health Development comes out, how the disbelieves regarding the health programs arise and what is the best way of achieving community participation.

Communication Paradigms . . .

For the first time ever the concept of Development Communication has been evolved in Farm Radio Forum, Canada in the year of 1941 and lasted till the year 1965, where farmers used to gather in a place to listen radio programs, also having the use of printed leaflets and group discussion on some significant socio-economic issues. This model farther has been used in India and Ghana for Adult Education Promotion Program. In El Salvador the concept of Instructional Television has been implemented in ’70s to improve the primary education. In Korea the same concept has been implemented to decrease the birth rate in villages. Later also this communication process has got widely spread throughout the whole world in different context whenever something change in society got important. Especially in Participatory Paradigm development communication came into to supreme tool to make the vision participatory concept to be most fruitful. Though this concept has been firstly practiced during near ‘40s, but the term ‘Development Communication’ has been introduced for the first time by The Modernization Paradigm is the oldest one which has been evolved just after Second World War. The main motto of this era was development of the third world countries. And the thought was injected into the underdevelopment people is that; the development can come only from the blind footstep following of the development countries. In this period communication in between different countries took place in top-down method where only the superior had the power to speak. Underdeveloped countries had become into the silent follower of the developed nations. The concept of variation in race, culture, religion, believes have never been considered in this paradigm. In Modernization Paradigm the power practice of top nations on the weaker nations was extreme, but in ’60s which got a bit lesser effective in Dependency Paradigm. Though here also the communication bridge between developed and underdeveloped countries could pass messages in top-down method, but in that time the significance of cultural, religious, social or economical diversities has been evolved in communication. After the failure of both Modernization and Dependency model the third and latest one, The Participatory Paradigm has been evolved with the notion of both way communication model for making the communication more successful to achieve to goal. Participatory Paradigm has dealt with facts of divergence in social-religious-cultural issues between nations which made it more success than the earlier paradigms. , who is pioneering the discipline of development communication in Asia and also known as ‘The Mother of Development Communication’ as she has introduced this term for the first time ever.

Basic understanding about Strategic Communication and P-Process

Strategic Communication

Strategic Communication is a way of communication, having a specific vision and goad to achieve followed by some well defined strategy to work in. Strategic Communication is applied in long-term process to meat any change in social trends or thoughts by enforcing strategic theme-planning and fixing up certain goals as the destiny.

P-Process: A guided steps of Stategic Communication

The P-Process

The P-Process is a model of well defined way of describing the steps of a successful cycle of Strategic Communication Process.The steps of a P-Process of Strategic Communication are as follows:

StepI: Analysis

Analysis is the very first and significant steps of a strategic communication cycle. To work in any project it’s the prerequisite to study and analyze that, what are the phenomenons under the observation. The task of analysis also takes place in some steps like, situation analysis, audience analysis, communication analysis… This ‘behind the curtain’ job might not visible in the total action plan, but keeps a good impact on choosing further methodologies in further steps of communication. This step could be named as the building block of the foundation of a successfull stategic communication process.

StepII: Strategic Design

In this step, communication objectives are fixed up having the following properties: Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic, and Time-bound. Strategic Design is used to develop program approaches and positioning, to determine channels, to draw up an implementation plan, to develop a monitoring and evaluation plan.

StepIII: Development and Testing

Develop message concepts, pretest with audience members and key-stakeholders in the society, revise and produce messages and materials; retest new and existing materials are the main job of this stage. Combining analysis and strategy with creativity, this step is based on participatory process to enhance the effectiveness of the process.

StepIV: Implementation and Monitoring

Produce and spread, training up the trainers and field workers, mobilizing the key stakeholders, manage the workflow and monitor the overall program and adjust program based on monitoring if needed, are the key responsibilities of this step.

StepV: Evaluation and Replanning

In this last step the outcome of prior 4 steps is to be evaluated and examined that if the acquired goal has been reached or not. It yes then the process continues to make the effect strengthen. If no, then the process-cycle again goes back to step-I to re-analyze the situation, to make the strategic communication to fruitful.

In modern P-Process Diagram, the graph is drawn in 3d format where the z-axis refers to actions taken for strenthening the strategic communication capacity.

Historical Background of Development Communication

Nora C. Quebral, Mother of Development Communication

For the first time ever the concept of Development Communication has been evolved in Farm Radio Forum, Canada in the year of 1941 and lasted till the year 1965, where farmers used to gather in a place to listen radio programs, also having the use of printed leaflets and group discussion on some significant socio-economic issues. This model farther has been used in India and Ghana for Adult Education Promotion Program. In El Salvador the concept of Instructional Television has been implemented in ’70s to improve the primary education. In Korea the same concept has been implemented to decrease the birth rate in villages. Later also this communication process has got widely spread throughout the whole world in different context whenever something change in society got important. Especially in Participatory Paradigm development communication came into to supreme tool to make the vision participatory concept to be most fruitful. Though this concept has been firstly practiced during near ‘40s, but the term ‘Development Communication’ has been introduced for the first time by Nora C. Quebral, who is pioneering the discipline of development communication in Asia and also known as ‘The Mother of Development Communication’ as she has introduced this term for the first time ever.

Different ways of Organizational Communication

As we know communication means the way of conveying information from one to another using different physical or technological media support. Like the very basic concept of interpersonal communication when the sector gets larger, in case of large volume communication it works a bit different way. In Development organizations where the main motto is to communicate with mass with huge influence, the process also works in some different phase and ways:

Corporate Communication
The way a development organization conveys their message to the external audience, the general mass people about their offered service with the vision to promote new thoughts or policies.

Internal Communication
For a successful corporate communication, an organization should have to be prepared with a good internal understanding about their upcoming strategies, procedures, planning or policy making. And to go in such a way, communication in between the professionals of the organization is badly needed. This in house communication of organization professionals to discuss on certain matters of working process is known as Internal Communication.

Advocacy Communication
The communication taken place with the vision of promote issues about development, with impact on change in policy making level or having role in building some awareness is known as Advocacy Communication.

Development Communication

Described in previous post

DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION: BASIC UNDERSTANDINGS

The concept of Development Communication is very much clear as its name. Very simply the communication with others regarding development issues that means any sort of progressive approach in any sector like society, economy, policy making process is commonly expressed as Development Communication.
This terminology was first evolved by Nora C. Quebral, who is also known as The Mother of Development Communication.
Finally more specifically, Development Communication means, a particular way of communication seeking in any socio-economical, infrastructural development which can lead us to the way of better life.