Mapping Competencies for Communication for Development and Social Change: Part II: The Conference

-from Mapping Competencies for Communication for Development and Social Change: Turning Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Into Action

Part II

The Bellagio Conference: Toward the Definition of Competencies for Communication for Development and Social Change


The Rockefeller Foundation, PAHO, and the CHANGE Project organized the Bellagio Conference to begin the process of defining competencies for Communication forDevelopment and Social Change. The accomplishments of this conference are significant, but just a beginning in a multi-step process.

The conference participants focused on Identification of Competencies, the first process in the competency approach described in Part I. They also began to list the knowledge and performance criteria for the competencies they identified: in other words, what a communicator needs to know and be able to do to successfully perform each competency. Over time, as the work begun in Bellagio is disseminated, discussed, and refined, it is hoped that the competencies proposed here can evolve into an accepted standard for Communication for Development and Social Change that can be used in assessment, credentialing, and the other competency-based processes.

The recognition of the need to define competencies for Communication for Development and Social Change evolved from a previous conference held at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in October 2000. That meeting, convened by the Rockefeller Foundation and the CHANGE Project, looked at the broad trends and needs inthe field of Development Communication. Training and credentialing of professionals was identified as a priority for future action. Subsequently, PAHO suggested that defining competencies could be a potentially useful input to determine what such training should entail. PAHO put together a proposal for a Conference on Competencies in Communication for Development and Social Change. PAHO, Rockefeller, and USAID (through the CHANGE Project) worked together to cosponsor and organize the conference that took place in early 2002.

Participants were invited to Bellagio to work toward the goal envisioned by the three cosponsors: to define a comprehensive set of competency requirements for Communication for Development and Social Change and the knowledge and performance requirements to design acompetency-based curriculum. Decisions about inviting only 20 to 25 participants from among the many who would be valuable contributors were based on three criteria: representation from as many regions of the world as possible, minimal participation of the three cosponsors, and a goal of 60% successful practicing communicators and 40%professors of communication. Participants came from Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the United States, and included communicators who work in universities, government agencies, NGOs, and elsewhere. The list of participants appears as Appendix A-2 [see full PDF document on the CHANGE site].

Framing the Issues

To move from the general discussion on competencies to defining them for Communication for Development and Social Change, the Conference organizers asked several participants to prepare background papers to provide input.

Peru and Competencies: A Work in Progress

María Angélica Borneck, of USAID/Peru, and Silvio Waisbord, a Rutgers University consultant to the CHANGE Project (now team leader of CHANGE's capacity building unit), discussed a "work in progress" in Peru. With improved health for Peruvians as one of its strategic objectives, the USAID Mission developed a five-year strategy of investing at the university level to build national educational capacity in clinical skills and in communication for development and social change, with an emphasis in health. At the time of the Bellagio Conference, the Mission had begun three studies to understand -

• existing university courses related to communication and development,
• demand for communication professionals in Peru,
• lessons learned over the past decade in nationally and internationally financed communication programs.

With the findings, USAID will support national and regional universities in Peru to develop curricula. The work developed around competencies, Borneck noted to her colleagues in Bellagio, could feed into this process.

Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes: Consensus from the Field

Dana Faulkner, of the CHANGE Project, reviewed the results of a Delphi survey conducted by CHANGE and the Communication Initiative (CI) via the CI Web site in 2001. (The presentation, prepared by CHANGE director Susan Zimicki, appears asAppendix C-1).

The survey was not intended to provide concrete quantitative inputs to define competencies. Instead, its purpose was to provide a starting point for the Bellagio discussions by capturing a range of input from practitioners in the field. More than 300 people responded in each round, although they were self-selecting and not a random or scientific sample.

In the first round of the Delphi survey, people identified five skills a competent communicator for development and social change should know how to do, five areas of knowledge she or he should understand, and five attitudes that she or he should hold. In the second round of the survey, respondents ranked the top five from among the responses received.

On a scale of 1 to 10, almost all the skills, knowledge, and attitudes ranked highly, and no one area clearly outscored the others. Nonetheless, an overview of the survey shows -

• Skills that received the highest ratings include the ability to understand the target audience and the context and culture in which people live; the ability to listen and observe; and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.
• Knowledge that received the highest ratings includes knowledge of local conditions, community issues, and cross-cultural issues.
• Attitudes that received the highest ratings included respect for human and cultural diversity and belief in the importance of participation.

Overall - looking at skills, knowledge, and attitudes - the survey reflects a consensus on the overriding importance of community involvement in communication and change processes.

Communications Curricula: What's Happening Now

Jim Hunt and Alfonso Gumucio Dagron reviewed what they had learned to date about current curricula in Communication for Development and Social Change. Their study, commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, is looking at programs worldwide. (See Appendices C-2 and C-3 for their presentations.)

Mr. Hunt reported that few programs exist that are specifically called "communication for development and social change," although the relevant content appears in some training programs and within departments of communications, health, agriculture, and other disciplines.

In Latin America, Mr. Gumucio noted that the "new communicator" tends to be self-taught and learns from experience. Most university communications programs focus on journalism. Nonetheless, he summarized how five universities are incorporating communication for development in their offerings. At the time of the Conference, he had not reviewed programs in Africa and Asia, but that was to be the next stage in his review.

Future Trends

Dana Faulkner presented what she called "informed speculation" on future trends that might affect the competencies needed by a communicator for development and social change. These trends covered the areas of technology, funding, philosophy, politics, culture, and commerce. (Appendix C-4 contains her presentation.) Among her observations:

• Technology is advancing rapidly, but communicators must still consider how to reach the many people who do not have access to the Internet and other new technologies.
• Funding is diversifying but new donors may bring a different mindset and expectations to development and social change.
• Philosophically, the field of Communication for Development and Social Change is often caught between the increased recognition of the importance of participation and other long-term processes and the need for results and accountability in the shorterterm.
• In the post-September 11 world, awareness of the need for foreign assistance has increased in many countries, but an anti-terrorism agenda has become a more predominant force. Communicators may need to contend with how to work in this environment.
• While a global culture is emerging, many places are isolated from it. This may imply that communicators must have global savvy but also understand the needs and cultures of those isolated from the mainstream.
• New marketing approaches, greater customer control of delivery channels and other trends are changing how businesses sell products and services and will rapidly influence communication about health and other public interest issues.

Getting Down to Business

The Bellagio participants spent the next three days of the Conference conducting a functional analysis of Communication for Development and Social Change. (As noted in Part I, a functional analysis is the most widely used method to identify competencies.) The product of this method of analysis is a Functional Map that defines the Key Purpose of an occupation or field, its Key Functions, the Units of Competence that are needed to perform the Key Functions, and Elements of Competence that make up the Units of Competence and are disaggregated to the point of a task or activity.

A few words of explanation are helpful beforereviewing the analysis that took place in Bellagioto develop the Functional Map for Communicationfor Development and Social Change that appears in Part III (and in outline text format as Appendix B-2 [see full PDF document on the CHANGE site]):

• The terms Key Function, Unit of Competence, and Elements of Competence - and more importantly, the level of detail that they reflect - are the standards used in the competencies field. (See box "Defining the Terms.")
• Functional analysis uses a cause-and-effect logic. Analysis consists of breaking down functions from the starting point of a Key Purpose of an endeavor: that is, by first asking "What is the key purpose of ...[in this case, Communication for Development and Social Change]?" The key purpose is, in turn, questioned in the following way: "What must be done in order to ...[be able to attain the key purpose of Communication for Development and Social Change?]" These answers will be the key or major functions that, in turn, must be questioned to get to basic functions (the units of competence) and subfunctions (the elements of competence). There is no specific number of how many key functions or units or elements of competence should be identified.
• A functional map does not represent what a single individual is expected to know and be able to do, but the field as a whole. In the case of the Functional Map for Communication for Development and Social Change, one person could not possibly know or perform everything it contains. However, ideally an organization has personnel, volunteers, or contractors that collectively can perform all the competencies that the map identifies.
• The process of identifying competencies must be developed with the participation of those who work in the field. An outside facilitator can bring experience with competency development to the table, but not replace the expertise of those involved.

Ms. Irigoin, as the conference facilitator, listened to the discussion and background papers about Communication for Development and Social Change to propose some initial wording for the Key Purpose. The group subsequently refined the Key Purpose to reach consensus. Thus, the answer to the question "What is the key purpose of Communication for Development and Social Change" became: "Use communication to facilitate efforts by people to achieve sustainable improvements in individual and collective well-being."Four small groups were then organized to develop Key Functions needed to achieve this Key Purpose. The groups worked in break-out sessions and then presented their ideas in a plenary. The next day was spent almost entirely reviewing the Key Functions and coming to consensus on what the Functional Map should depict.

As shown on the Functional Map, two Key Functions were identified to achieve the Key Purpose for Communication for Development and Social Change:

1. Enable/facilitate dialogue with and within communities to support sustainable policyand decision-making processes and set feasible goals that would require the contribution of communication approaches.
2. Use communication strategies, methods and resources to achieve current goals and build capacity to address future development problems and social change issues.

Through a similar process of small and plenary group work, Units of Competency were identified for each Key Function, and Elements of Competency identified from each Unit of Competency. It should be noted that a simple listing of the map wording and structure shortchanges the challenge of the process. Flipchart notes proliferated, discussions continued through breaks and meals, and pieces of the map were written and re-written as participantsanalyzed their field.

A draft of the Map was completed in Bellagio inFebruary. In April, a sub-group of the whole met atPAHO headquarters in Washington, DC, and prepared a revised draft. This draft was then sent to the Bellagio conference participants for review.The Functional Map presented on the following pages is the result of this final review. A version of the map in text format appears as Appendix B-2 [see full PDF document on the CHANGE site].This Functional Map represents a key first step in the development of an accepted standard of competencies for the field of Communications for Development and Social Change. How participants at Bellagio envisioned using the map follows in Part IV.