WITS School of Public Health to offer practical training for 60 UNICEF Officers

Prof. David Mould and Dr. Karen Greiner

The Wits School of Public Health is the practical training ground for about 60 officers from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the final leg of a multi-dimensional course which began six months ago.  Wits will host the course over the next two weeks.

Originally started in Ohio, USA, the course in Communication Development, which takes place until 16 August 2013 at the School, will see 57 UNICEF employees from 38 countries, all specialists in different areas concerning children, gaining knowledge and practical experience in how to communicate effectively with communities.

Programme director, Prof. David Mould, from Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies, says this is the fourth group that he has overseen since the inception of the programme in 2011.

“We are in the third year of the staff training programme for UNICEF on communication for development and by 16 August, we would have completed training for over 200 staff members. It seems like a lot, but UNICEF has 8000 employees worldwide,” says Mould.

Mould says the purpose of the training is to help the specialists, to be able to talk to people in rural areas, where targeted communication plans are needed to get a message across swiftly and efficiently, but in the simplest way.

“There are a lot of people working for UNICEF in the areas of aid for children and families such as education, sanitation, child rights and child labour, but they don’t know much about how to use communication to their best advantage. Sometimes it is a question of cultural beliefs and not facilities, for example: you can produce a polio vaccine, but how do you convince people in, for instance, northern Nigeria that this is a not a Western plot to reduce fertility? In this programme, we cover the entire spectrum of small interpersonal communication to mass group communication for them to see what is appropriate to serving their goals.”

He believes that change is possible and can start with one person, but mass mobilisation is needed for an idea to become the norm.

“A lot of our work is about people changing people’s attitudes and it can happen at an individual level, but as soon as it is socially mobilised, something that has previously been unaccepted to a few, will become unacceptable behaviour for the whole society. We look at the values in society, levels of change amongst people and how you use communication through relations in the family,” says Mould.

This is something that Dr Karen Greiner, co-course director and visiting assistant professor in the School of Media and Art Studies at Ohio University, agrees with.

“Our motto is learning through doing. You have to do it to learn it. We look at social behavioural changes as a being part of an ecological model and we are helping the professionals to effectively measure what they do, to work more collaborative and inclusively, and helping children to become change agents in their communities,” says Greiner.

The 57 UNICEF members will work together with seven Johannesburg-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to get hands-on learning as part of the training. The NGOs – the Bosabosele Outreach Project, Conquest for Life, Copessa, Ikageng-Itireleng AIDS Ministry, LoveTrust, Soul Buddyz, and Twilight Children – were all chosen because of their involvement with children.

“Working with the NGOs is when the real work starts. We try to relate the programme to people’s own experiences in their countries, and this will build on that experience. A lot of the work cannot be book taught and the practical component at the NGOs will definitely add value. Posters and a media campaign will be a waste of money if you don’t understand how people will respond in different communities, and that is what we are trying to bring across here – how to read situations, countries and communities,” says Mould.

Communication for Development is an approach which stresses dialogue, allowing communities to have a voice in the decisions that affect them. It uses behaviour change communication, social mobilisation, advocacy and strengthened media capacity to stimulate positive and measurable behaviour and social change.