People’s participation is becoming the central issue of our time, and participation requires communication.
————–UNDP et al – Human Development Report (1993)
Communication plays a decisive role in promoting human development in today’s climate of social change. As the world revolves around greater democracy, decentralisation and the market economy, conditions cause people to start steering their own course of change. But it is vital to stimulate their awareness, participation and capabilities. Communication skills and technology are central to this task but at present, they are often underutilised in many ways. Policies are needed that encourage effective planning and implementation of communication programmes.
Development perspective
Major shifts and new dimensions have appeared on the development scene. Societies are opening to debate and markets to individual initiative; privatisation and entrepreneurship are being encouraged; new technologies are becoming widely available; management of government services is gradually being relocated closer to the users – if not handed over directly to users themselves – in order to cut costs and seek partners more committed to effective implementation. Indeed, a host of structural adjustments are profoundly affecting most aspects of production and human interaction. These structural adjustments make demands, and have direct economic and social effects on people.
Governments of developing countries can no longer fulfil all social and regulatory services by themselves, especially in rural areas. Many economies are overwhelmed by the cost of servicing their foreign debt, and governments are under stringent requirement from international financial institutions to reduce spending. In their quest for greater cost-effectiveness in all their operations, governments must have the active support of, and a greater contribution from, the people. Governments are thus obliged to seek new and perhaps unfamiliar partners, ranging from local leaders to people in a variety of non-governmental organisations. These people are accordingly obliged to shoulder new and perhaps unfamiliar responsibilities. Furthermore, at the turn of the century, a number of specific issues have come clearly into focus as being central to socio-economic progress, equity, social stability, the future of humanity, and perhaps even to its survival. Human development issues linger on:
- The environment
- Population growth
- Rural poverty
- Malnutrition
- Women in development
- Gender inequalities
The role of communication
The first common theme running through development issues is the human factor – the outcome will be based less on scientific and material inputs than on the people involved because even if our understanding of the development process is changing, there can be no doubt that its future shape, its pace, sustainability and ultimate direction – for better or worse – will be determined by people and the level of their awareness, participation and skills. Communication is the second common theme in the issues because if development can be seen as a fabric woven out of the activities of millions of people, communication represents the essential thread that binds them together.
On the one hand, communication – as dialogue and debate – occurs spontaneously in any time of social change. The increased freedom of expression in recent times has been almost simultaneous with changes in the global political structure. It is communication, as a deliberate intervention to affect social and economic change, that holds the most interesting possibilities. A development strategy that uses communication approaches can reveal people’s underlying attitudes and traditional wisdom, help people to adapt their views and acquire new knowledge and skills, and spread new social messages to large audiences. The planned use of communication techniques, activities and media give people powerful tools both to experience change and actually to guide it. An intensified exchange of ideas among all sectors of society can lead to the greater involvement of people in a common cause. This is a fundamental requirement for appropriate and sustainable development. Communication is indeed indispensable in our dispensation today in many ways, including:
Community mobilisation and people’s participation:
The dynamic strategy behind people’s participation and community mobilisation is to release the energy of rural people by building their confidence to make decisions and carry them out as a community in a self-reliant way. Communication activities can help people, even those from different social groups within a community, to share information and exchange ideas in a positive and productive fashion. This dialogue can be enriched by understanding how development issues affect them, discovering what others think in other communities, and seeing what other communities have achieved. These are effective methods to help people to reach a consensus and find common grounds for action based on their own needs and capabilities. Dialogue can be initiated and guided by field staff who have good interpersonal communication skills. Discussion tools, such as flipcharts, infographics, slides and even videos, can be used to help people visualise and reflect upon their own reality. Community radio can be indispensable; in that local people do most of the talking about technical and cultural topics. These activities can lead to a serious diagnosis of problems and a search for solutions.
Gaining people’s participation always requires much face-to-face work within the community in order to make a bridge of understanding. Communication skills and media help people to visualise and cross that bridge more swiftly.
Lifestyle changes:
Rural populations, and women in particular, find it increasingly difficult to cope with rapidly changing social conditions, which often lead to the development of unsettling life-styles. For instance, in societies where marriage and childbearing no longer go together, the social and economic cost of teenage pregnancies weighs heavily on people and the nation’s resources. In others, rural youth, often from fatherless homes, increasingly rebel against parental poverty. Pressed by peers, teenagers often drop out of school, fall for drugs or end up in the gangs of city slums. Communication can focus on the long and sensitive process of changing behaviour and life-styles. Quite recently, communication research methodologies make it possible to gain insight into the underlying reasons why people adopt a certain life-style.
Once this understanding is acquired, communication approaches can respond in a combination of ways. Mass media can raise awareness and public understanding of the social implications of problems, such as adolescent fertility, STDs or drug abuse. Other communication activities can bring about informed processes of change among the audiences they intend to reach. Interpersonal communication techniques, such as peer counselling, have the capacity to develop coping mechanisms, self-esteem and images of a better future among teenagers, especially if combined with group discussions and other tools which create a dialogue. Social communication activities based, for example, on street and village theatre, and using truly participatory methodologies can pioneer attitudinal changes at the community level and stimulate non-threatening environments in which teenagers wish to learn about life.
Programme formulation and better planning:
Any development programme that regards people as mere recipients, rather than as the actual creators of change and progress, usually fails. Consulting the people and actively involving them in making the decisions that will affect them virtually ensures the programme’s success.In practical terms, effective planning must make a deliberate effort to determine what people want to do, can do, and can continue to do in a sustainable way. To find this out, communication techniques go far beyond the simple question-and-answer survey. Meaningful discussion generated by people trained in interpersonal communication skills and audiovisual tools, such as video or radio, can help the community to identify its true problems and priorities, and where its capabilities and needs lie. This self-analysis can help a community to generate realistic proposals for new development initiatives, and stimulates tremendous interest to have these initiatives succeed. The views of rural people can also guide prospective work plans, preventing them from moving in the wrong direction. For example, agricultural research can be tied directly to what farmers really want and are capable of using. A systematic communication process brings researchers and practitioners together.
A policy of communicating with people intensively before a development programme is even drafted; and taking into account their views, capabilities and needs as they see them is the best insurance a planner can have.
Conclusion
Communication technology emanating strongly from the new media age, are increasingly reaching into rural areas of the world, offering the possibility of breaking their traditional isolation for the first time in history. In fact today, the idea is being mooted that telecommunication learning centres could be established in villages of the developing world, with user-friendly computer terminals that would download interactive learning and management information programmes from a central supply, similar to a water or electricity service, with users paying modest charges for the time of actual use. The programmes could be video images, sound and computer-type data. This technology already exists, and the speed with which it is becoming cheaper and more accessible is so rapid that the use of computers in the villages of developing countries may someday be part of a pragmatic strategy to reduce the rural-urban population shift and promote rural development.
Communication in human development is indispensable in modern times.
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About the writer
Ebenezer ASUMANG is a Development Communicator with experience in International Development Consulting, SME co-creation & development research and innovative financing.
You can reach him via [email protected] & [email protected]
