Invitation: Reference Group Engagement - The Communication Initiative

Many best wishes. Trust that all is well with yourself and loved ones in this massively difficult time. Huge thanks for being part of and contributing to The CI Network. Greatly appreciated.

Three trends prompt this note and invitation. First. along with all other organisations we are reviewing how we work in this age of COVID-19. Second The CI is increasingly being asked to distill knowledge shared by The CI network into brief papers or charts. Third, this distilling work would normally happen in and around meetings - of course there are no in-person meetings! 

For some time we have been contemplating commencing a Reference Group to critique and comment on some of the work we are undertaking. The purpose is to ensure that this work is up-to-date, relevant, resonant for our common field of work (communication for development, media development, community engagement, freedom of expression, social change and behaviour change), clear, concise  and ... most important - useful.

Just a few examples of work underway that would benefit greatly from critique and comment include: the communication and media development strategy related to rumours and misinformation; a simple (we hope) chart that presents the key elements of a social change strategy; a compilation of the past 5 years media development related funding decisions from two major Foundations, a bilateral and a UN agency; strategic ideas for community engagement in an age of social distancing; the learning from Ebola for COVID-19; rapid research techniques; and, The COVID-19 Hub.

In order to provide that all important critique and review we are seeking to convene a very private Reference Group of 100 people. The group has the required balance – geography, development issue, main strategy, gender, organisational type, etc - that will ensure the cross-ferilisation of different perspectives, experiences and ideas. Participation can be online or by email reply. We will share contributions made to all in this group on a confidential basis so that we can all learn from and critique each other’s perspectives. Your contributions will be private to this group. They will not be shared outside this Reference Group. 

We invite you to be part of this Reference Group. Very much hope that you can participate and test out this process through the initial three items for review before making a final decision as to whether to continue. Participation would be as and when interested and available. There is no need to critique and comment on everything. Please pick and choose. Short, to the point contributions are all that is needed – definitely not long, detailed analyses. We will space out the items for review. Each post shared for critique and review will have a core question.

We very much hope that your engagement through this Reference Group on these drafts and the others to come will be of benefit and support to your work.

We will soon take the liberty of sending you (a) the first of the very short papers and diagrammes on which we would welcome your critique and comments so that you can test the process and make a judgment and (b) the list of people we have invited to this Reference Group.

Thanks for engaging - if only for the initial 3 items! Really appreciated.

Most happy to answer any questions of course.

With many thanks – Warren