This book is a tool for people involved or interested in communication and natural resource management who seek a better understanding of how different theories and strategic change principles relate to actual practice.
The book relates a variety of theories and change principles in simplified, almost schematic form, to a series of real initiatives in the field through interactive ‘experiences’. This is a book about exploring the practical relation between theory and practice.
Experiences documented and the learning objective:
- community based natural resource management in Namibia: to improve participants’ understanding of the relationship between differing communication principles for effective change, and the planning and organisation of their actions;
- pastoralist communication in Kenya: to advance participants’ understanding of effective communication strategies, where substantive action is sourced in the voice and perspective of the people most affected;
- indigenous forest management in Cambodia: to expand participants’ skills at analysing the issues to be addressed by the communication initiative;
- recovering from conflict in Viet Nam: to improve participants’ skills at analysing the contexts for change;
- internet radio in Sri Lanka: to expand participants’ awareness of the relationship between culture, context and strategy, in developing effective communication initiatives;
- regional networking in Costa Rica and Nicaragua: to develop participants’ ability to understand the relation between individual behaviour change and structural/social obstacles or supports to that change;
- creating local organic markets in Turkey: to improve participant’s ability to understand key differences between approaches emphasising education or dialogue and the programmatic implications of those emphasis;
- environmental education and communication in El Salvador, The Gambia, Jordan: to heighten participants’ critical skills at matching the requirements for action with the context for that action.
The book then asks the participant to draw their own conclusions: to prioritise the lessons of the previous 8 experiences and reflect on how they will impact on their own future communication for development/natural resource management work.
