Three IRC staff members attended a strategic communication training organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The training covered identifying communication objectives and target audiences, creating clear messages, and implementing and monitoring communication activities. It provided principles for developing audience-focused messages that appeal to their values through repetition and being prepared to revise. It also warned against too much information, acronyms, and lack of narrative in documentation.

1. Advocacy
Lessons learned from the “Strategic Communication
training”
Training was held from 11-15 November 2008, organised by the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for Grantees, and facilitated
by Spitfire Communications. Three IRC staff participated.

2. Strategic communication
• Identifying which (project) objectives need explicit
communication support
• Identifying audiences for these communication
activities
• Creating messages
• Planning communication activities
• Implementing and monitoring

3. Some principles for
starting
• Know your short term objective: 6 months
• Know yourself: evaluate your position
• Gauge your audiences: values

4. Some principles for
messaging
• Develop messages appealing to their values
• Plan and target simple messages
• Repitition is good
• Be ready to revise

5. Watch out for these
• Acronyms like MEGO and crazy phrases
– My eyes glaze over...
• Too much information
• Math problems
• Lack of narrative

6. ... and process
documentation
• Understanding your position
• Who are key audiences and what are their values?
• How can you monitor the impact of your messages?
• Strategic communication can help guide process
documentation outputs.

7. Andy Goodman highlights IRC and the Atieno Family comic book
as the best example of storytelling among all the BMGF grantee
websites.
See his book: “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes.”

8. Highlight: New Yorker, standing behind me when I’m taking this
shot says “Its the best pisser in New York. If there is a hurricane,
I’m jumping into this one.”