How globaldev communications survived lockdown

LONDON — Like many other aspects of development, NGO communications work was thrown into disarray earlier this year after coronavirus lockdowns caused travel chaos. For a sector where international travel is a fundamental aspect of working life, the sudden restrictions brought enormous challenges. For communications, key challenges have included the collection of materials remotely and the need to shift attention primarily to digital methods. But development professionals working in this field told Devex that the travel disruption also catalyzed innovation and signaled the possibility of permanent shifts in working practices for the better. Chief among them is a move toward employing local talent, rather than flying in specialists from the global north. “The bigger NGOs would tend to have their own photography and film crews who would travel out to different countries [but are now] relying on teams on the ground or partner organizations,” said Rachel Erskine, co-chair of Bond’s working group on ethical content collection. Erskine also works as communications manager at Amref Health Africa UK, an NGO focused on health development. In this role, “we’ve relied on project staff much more to generate content, photography, and interviews,” she said. The situation made Erskine realize how important it is to ensure that program personnel have a basic understanding of photography and the consent process, while also taking care not to overburden them in an emergency. Though content collection can be an afterthought in a crisis for program staffers whose expertise lies elsewhere, there is generally an understanding of the importance of this work, according to Erskine. “They know photography and stories will end up being used in proposals … that ultimately will enable us to implement more work. Demonstrating that is part of the process,” she said. Isabelle Kermeen, communications manager at Integrity Action, echoed this sentiment. “It just made us … question how we do comms in general, and we are also keen to start working more with clients from the global south, because the stories we are telling are from the global south,” she said. “Now that everyone’s realized how much easier it is than they thought to do things remotely, I would definitely be very keen to work with … illustrators or designers or production companies or voice-over artists who are actually from where we work,” she added. Alongside the shift to localism, communications specialists have risen to the challenge presented by lockdowns by experimenting with new formats. Kermeen’s team had planned to produce a series of short films on Integrity Action’s citizen monitoring projects, which help communities access official complaint mechanisms to galvanize action on municipal shortcomings, such as teachers not turning up to class in Afghanistan. But with filming on the ground no longer possible, the group tried another route. It worked with partner organizations in-country to collect stories “in a safe way” from its programs and is now working with an external animation agency to produce several short animations. “I think some organizations sent people out on field visits a bit too liberally. … I hope that other organizations might realize it’s possible to do a lot more than you think remotely.” --— Isabelle Kermeen, communications manager, Integrity Action “We realized pretty early [in the pandemic] it wouldn’t be feasible [to film], so we went ahead with commissioning animated videos instead,” Kermeen said. “You can do a lot with animation you can’t do with film.” In particular, producing content ethically was made easier by working in the new animation format. “We have mitigated some risks related to informed consent because we’re not using actual people or their voices,” Kermeen said. An increased focus on the possibilities offered by technology and social media has also emerged for some. With face-to-face interviews now out of the question in many cases, mediums like video clips, Twitter threads, Instagram stories, and WhatsApp interviews have featured more prominently in Amref’s communications, according to Erskine. These have taken a more “piecemeal” approach, drip-feeding smaller items like quotes rather than compiling everything into blogs online. “We’ve had to be a bit more creative … and braver and accept the fact we won’t be able to produce really polished content,” Erskine said. But this has “really encouraged us to innovate” and pushed the organization to “try things we wanted to anyway but were hesitant about.” This has led to user-generated content — produced by nonprofessionals, usually on their mobile devices — becoming a key format, of which “everyone can see the benefits,” Erskine said. “It has that more authentic feel, it's cheaper to produce, and you can produce it so much more easily when you’re in the field and you have a smartphone, rather than needing a whole film crew.” This innovation has also emerged in advocacy campaigns. End Water Poverty, a global coalition of civil society organizations, moved its Claim Your Water Rights campaign entirely online. As organizing physical protests was not an option, it went digital using the website Manif.app, according to Sam Taylor, the coalition’s engagement officer. Screenshots of the digital protests, and accompanying slogans, would then be sent to a particular target, such as a water or finance minister. “That’s been quite an exciting use of online platforms. We’re now looking at using those in a more regular way,” Taylor said. But going back to basics has also worked for EWP. Local radio has been used by the coalition’s members in Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe for advocacy and communications work. “Radio’s been a really good way of putting pressure onto politicians, and it’s led to certain commitments from governments as well,” Taylor said. In Nigeria, this came in the form of an on-air personal commitment from the Enugu state hospital administrator to rehabilitate all water and sanitation services at health facilities in the region after the administrator listened to an EWP member’s interviews with under-resourced health care workers. There is still value in traveling overseas for communications work, Kermeen said, but the pandemic’s disruption is likely to influence the way it is conducted in future. “I think some organizations sent people out on field visits a bit too liberally. … I hope that other organizations might realize it’s possible to do a lot more than you think remotely,” she said.