Survey on the World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD)

As detailed here, the purpose of the survey was to engage WCCD participants - as well as others who did not participate but who share an interest in communication for development - in a process of commenting and reflecting on what happened at the WCCD. The majority of respondents who completed the survey participated in the WCCD (272 out of 319); they hailed from a range of organisations and work across a wide spectrum of communication action, planning, and research.

These respondents offer a variety of perspectives on the WCCD itself, providing a number of constructive suggestions for future gatherings - such as the importance of creating wide space for the voices of those from the south and/or from smaller organisations working directly with the people most affected by the development issues being discussed. One idea for such gatherings in the future might involve ensuring that plenaries, sessions, and overall participant support are optimised to reflect strong communication for development practise (e.g., by ensuring that they are not overly formal); otherwise, there can be a lack of support for participation and exchange. In addition, comments shared here imply that - while the WCCD organisers made a conscious decision to ensure that the sessions were balanced between the presentation of findings submitted via the call for papers and other presentations from practitioners, policymakers, and organisations steeped in doing communication work - more could still be done in future gatherings to ensure that the voices of those deeply engaged in communication for development work ("on the ground") are heard.

Many respondents indicated that the event provided an opportunity for networking with, and learning from, a diverse range of people working in the same field and across many sectors. Specifically, they felt that the WCCD succeeded through the diverse areas of expertise and work of its participants, the breadth and quality of the presentations, and the range of topics covered. They also stressed that the event's size and high profile helped create a significant opportunity for further action and advocacy. Many respondents expressed the desire to see further meetings, either in the form of more WCCDs or new regional or national conferences. There were also suggestions to hold more focused meetings with policymakers, researchers, and academics as part of an effort to continue to discuss and move the WCCD agenda forward.

This summary document also highlights a number of insights to emerge from the WCCD, such as in the area of advocating for the importance of communication in the field of development. For example, one respondent suggested compiling an overview/synthesis of compelling evidence from the WCCD presentations and the papers of the contribution of communication for development - as well as the demand for it. A publication featuring "lessons learned" that focuses on practical recommendations of how to increase the importance of communications as an integral part of project design, implementation, and evaluation could be created. Another respondent highlighted the need to develop more on-the-ground case histories on how communication has supported and advanced development. There was a consensus that the field still suffers from the lack of a simple, easy-to-understand definition of communication for development and that the crafting of such a definition should be a priority, along with the preparation of other appropriate advocacy materials. One idea in moving forward is to establish a representative guiding group to help move the advocacy agenda forward - to the end of both identifying and broadening the WCCD policymaker audience, and to carrying out monitoring and reporting functions in the communication for development field.

Click here to download the summary report from this survey in PDF format.

Click here to download the appendix of full comments from this survey in PDF format.