The importance of advocates, activists and others working on SRHR in NGOs to publicise their work including successes and lessons learned.

1. Transformative
writing:
~~~~~~~~~~
from practice
to publication
to advocacy
and action
Marge Berer
Editor, RHM
~~~~~~~~~~
24 January 2014
7th APCSRHR
Manila

2. Finding time for writing
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Few NGO people working for sexual and
reproductive health and rights are given
enough work time to write about their work.
So, the time has to be stolen ‒ from free
time, nights, weekends, holidays.
That's how it is.
This talk is to inspire you to do it anyway…
Because telling others about the work we are
doing to achieve sexual and reproductive
health and rights is as important as the work
itself. Otherwise, no one but us will know about
it or understand its purpose and importance.

3. Disseminating knowledge
From practice…
to publication…
to advocacy…
to action…
to practice…
to change the world!

4. Writing about what you do
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Promotional material ‒ an idealised picture,
look what we've accomplished! ‒ is what you
write for a donor and in your annual report…
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OR ‒ the real story, in-depth, the problems,
the mistakes, the false starts, the limited
progress, the failures ‒ and the successes…
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Promotional material helps you get funding
and reach out to people needing services, but
it doesn't describe the reality of your work, and
it doesn't help fellow NGOs to use your
experience as a model (or learn how difficult
implementation of our goals can be).

5. Barriers to telling the truth

Fear of punitive reaction by donors if you admit
to anything except success/impact. E.g.
Evaluation of youth safer sex behaviour change
projects in Latin America ‒ after two years
knowledge was greatly improved but behaviour
hadn't yet changed. Donor pulled the funding.

The government who asked for the report
doesn't want anyone to see that things are less
than perfect so excellent reports sit in filing
cabinets gathering dust and no one learns a
project even existed, what it accomplished or
what it can teach others about how to succeed
and avoid mistakes (UNFPA Africa Road Maps).

6. How to present your work
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Research report ‒
background, methodology, participants, finding
s, discussion, conclusions and
recommendations.
A narrative history of activities ‒ like a diary.
A narrative centred around individual case
histories of people your project has helped.
Videos/photos but with narrative explanation.
Blogs with narrative history/diary instead of an
article ‒ could be daily or weekly describing
what you did that day/that week. Could be
edited into a report after 3‒6 months or a year.
Other media/means people have used too.

7. Where to publish
RHM ‒ crucial to publish these sort of articles.
 Do you know of other journals who do? If
not, you need to search for them.
 In a quick search I found:
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 WHO SE Asia Journal of Public Health ‒ section on
policy and practice, reports from the
field, commentary, and voices
 Indian Journal of Public Health
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Publish on the website of your NGO.
 But no matter where/how you publish your
report, you will need to disseminate it ‒
sending to colleagues, posting on listserves
and web, tweeting, using in presentations, etc.

8. Writing skills ‒ yes, it's very hard!!!
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Very few people enjoy writing.
Editing is the largest part of the work of writing
and even fewer people like editing.
I like to compare writing and editing to
sculpture. You sculpt a piece of stone until
your vision appears in the material itself.
Or painting ‒ you paint millions of dots and
lines, you add something, you take some
away, you make it bigger or darker or brighter.
Or knitting, one stitch at a time… it needs
patience and thought. Edit and edit again!
The end product makes it all worth it!

9. Audience / language: prioritise
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Will a description of your project be of value for
people all over the world? Or mostly for your
region or country? Or for specific people in
your country, e.g. a government committee?
 Answering these questions affects where you
seek to publish it ‒ e.g. an international,
regional or national journal, or a specific group.
 It affects which language you write it in. Why
use English if the paper is significant only for
speakers of your own (other) language?
 Or, if for both, you may want to have it in your
own language for local publication and also in
English for an international readership.

10. A paper in a widely read national
journal may lead to a different kind of
influence and change from a paper in
an international journal.

11. Should everyone try it?
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Should everyone try to be a writer or editor?
No! People who like it/want to/are good at it, yes!
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But everyone who is capable of conceptualising and carrying out research and projects in
our field is capable of contributing to articles,
reports, videos, i.e. reading and critiquing a
draft text and realising what is right and wrong
with it, what's missing, and so on.
 To help, there are certain "formulas" you can
use. For example, every abstract needs
specific components relevant to the type of
paper, e.g. why this project, aim of the project and
this paper, project description, participants,
activities or findings, outcomes, what's next.

12. Using formulas
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A good abstract serves as the outline of the
main sections of the paper, and of the
headings of those sections.
 Thus, after writing only a few hundred
words, you already have an outline. Then you
can fill that in with lots of details, data, case
histories, and the equivalent of a project
diary/history.
 Other good practice:
 plan the paper with your co-authors before starting.
 answer: who, what, where, when, why, how.
 when you are recounting the history of the
project, present the information in historical order.
Don't tell what happened in 2011 before you say

13. Language: options
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Write/edit in your own language first, and then
have it translated. Getting an excellent
translation is not easy + it also needs editing!
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RHM editions in translation ‒ in both Chinese
and Arabic the editors decided to create a
glossary of translated terms. Even the
translation of "reproductive health" was not
obvious, e.g. in Chinese or French.
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Writing in English only ‒ yes but then help is
needed from an editor who understands your
English so as to be able to edit/correct it.

14. Examples

15. RHM 41, May 2013 (1)
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Making it Real: Sexual Health Communication for
Young People Living with Disadvantage
(Australia) ‒ activity using focus groups with young
people. The report puts forward recommendations on
communication strategies on STIs based on their
input, including in their own words.
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Pacific Youth: Their Rights, Our Future: Report of
an Open Hearing on Adolescent Sexual and
Reproductive Health in the Pacific (NZ) ‒ The NZ
Parliamentarians' group on population and
development initiated this in the Pacific region. Wide
range of written submissions received and 12 chosen
for oral presentation at the Open Hearing. Outcome:
recommendations by regional stakeholders for action.

16. RHM 41, May 2013 (2)
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The Sexuality Education Initiative: a
programme involving
teenagers, schools, parents and sexual health
services in Los Angeles, CA, USA ‒ Starting in
2008 Planned Parenthood Los Angeles developed and
launched a teen-centred sexuality education
programme. It was based on critical thinking, human
rights, gender equality, and access to health care. It
reflects a theory of change that recognises the
complex relationship between the individual and
broader environment of cultural norms, socio-economic
inequalities, health disparities, legal and institutional
factors.
A history of learning by the people providing the
education, not just the school students receiving it.

17. RHM 41, May 2013 (3)
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Crowdout AIDS: crowdsourcing youth
perspectives for action ‒ To develop a strategy for
how to better engage young people in decisionmaking processes on AIDS, UNAIDS launched the
participatory online policy project CrowdOutAIDS in
2011. A total of 3,497 young people aged 15–29 from
79 countries signed up to nine online forums, and
volunteers recruited through the online platform hosted
39 community-based offline forums with an additional
1,605 participants. Conclusion ‒ it is possible to
integrate grassroots perspectives from across the
globe into a new model of engagement and
participation, which should be further explored for
community empowerment and mobilization.
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Using web, social media, local forums to create policy.

18. Examples: RHM 42, November 2013 (1)
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Mobilizing women at the grassroots to shape
health policy: a case study of the Global
Campaign for Microbicides ‒ examines the
contribution of this Campaign to the movement to
expand the range of HIV prevention options for
women. It describes how they mobilized hundreds of
grassroots policy activists around the world to take
coordinated action on this issue, and considers the
value of similar efforts on the part of grassroots
advocates seeking to influence the post-ICPD and
post-2015 development agendas.
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Use of basic scientific research, political campaigning
and lobbying.

19. Examples: RHM 42, November 2013 (2)
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Discrepancies between national maternal
mortality data and international estimates: the
experience of Papua New Guinea ‒ Over the
past 30 years maternal mortality estimates for Papua
New Guinea have varied widely. This disparity has
been a source of considerable confusion for health
workers, policy makers and development partners.
Knowing the maternal mortality ratio is a necessary
starting point for working out how to reduce it.
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Complex statistical research and analysis, using e.g.
hospital records, to make practice effective.

20. Examples: RHM 42, November 2013 (3)
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From MDGs to post-2015 sustainable
development: SRHR in an evolving aid
environment ‒ Using research from country case
studies in Lao PDR, Malawi, Senegal, and Tajikistan,
this paper offers insights into changes in development
assistance between 2005 and 2011, and their impact
on the inclusion of a SRHR agenda in national
planning. Globally, donors supported sector wide
approaches, poverty reduction strategy papers, direct
budgetary support with use of economic frameworks in
decision-making. The MDGs brought heightened
attention to maternal mortality, at the expense of a
broader SRHR agenda…

21. … continued
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Advocacy at the national planning level was not well
linked to programme implementation; health officials
were disadvantaged in economic arguments, and
lacked financial and budgetary controls to ensure a
connection between advocacy and action. With
increasing competency in higher level planning
processes, however, health officials are now
refocusing the post-2015 development goals. Today,
advocates need to link SRHR to the key sustainable
development themes: inequalities in gender,
education, growth and population, but also to
urbanisation, migration, women in employment and
climate change.
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Use of policy analysis and in-depth interviews with a
wide range of stakeholders.

22. All papers available at:
www.rhm-elsevier.com