Page updated:
Friday, 7 September 2007

SPECIAL REPORT - Part 2

COMMUNICATING DEVELOPMENT...

Successful community campaigning

Rhonda Galbally, VicHealth...

Campaigns

In her work with VicHealth, Galbally found community awareness campaigns do not work and fail to achieve behavioural change, although they may achieve something.

The model of knowledge leading to attitudinal change, which in turn leads to behavioural modification, is dysfunctional. The information > education > communication model fails to result in changes to behaviour.

Galbally said that having hope is a positive factor. The challenge is how do we promote hopefulness when fearfulness and hopelessness are so prevalent.

"People are at risk because the situation is risky", said Galbally. "Aid is hope... it is taking control over their lives".

Government/NGO collaboration

Harold Wilkinson, Department of Health and Family Services...

The main points of Wilkinson's presentation included:

• issues need to bed efined and clear in the minds of the public
• involve a community target group and your partners
• do not lose sight of the big picture
• government and NGO collaboration on communication campaigns will involve some compromise by both groups
• collaboration will involve a commitment of resources, particularly by government.

Reviewing the surveys

Barry elliott, Elliott and Shanahan research...

Barry Elliott produced A Review of Community Attitudes on Overseas Aid.

He analysed ten population surveys and 15 constituent surveys commissioned by aid agencies dating back to 1972.

The context in which the surveys were carried out, Elliott said, is
" ...absolutely critical to the answers". The phrasing of the questions affects the answers received.

Future surveys, Elliott, said, should utilise multivariate analysis.

Analysis

Elliott's findings include:

• quantitative language is unfamiliar to the public
• the real issue of one of finding ways to tap beliefs about more or less aid
• there is a correlation of support for domestic welfare and spending on foreign aid; the same people donate to both
• domestic issues dominate for most Australians; aid is a low priority
• people are aware of aid but know little about it
• there are considerable public doubts about the effectiveness of aid
• survey results disclose a degree of trust in NGOs exists in regard to the spending of public donations.

Targeting the aid message

Elliott identified a number of points about targeting aid messages:

• surveys have produced confused results about which segments of the population should be targeted
• school children are fundamental to the future
• the 55+ age group are the least likely to donate to aid and are a growing portion of the population; NGOs may find it more difficult to raise funds and carry out development education
• indications exist of a relationship between education, occupation, income and support for aid, however it is not strong
• focus on people's values to identify target groups.

The message

Elliott proposes the adoption of the positive messages identified in the 1996 UK publication, A Case for Aid. A A Manifesto:

• aid works
• spend now, save later
• aid is a hand up, not a hand out
• aid is in everyone's interest.

The needs of research

Further research aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the aid message would be of benefit to agencies.

Effective communication, Elliott says, depends upon an understanding of the point of view of our target audience. We need to identify who provides support and to discover their positive positions and to build on these.

Other observations:

• information about the context in which people think about aid is needed
• there is a huge portion of the population in the middle of the support/do not support continuum that we can influence
• we need reliable measures to monitor the support for aid over time
• we need reliable measures for the benchmarking of attitudes to aid every four or five years.