Communication

Communicators in development are having a hard time in the days of "Dead Aid" and the "White man's burden". This became obvious at the annual meeting of the OECD-DAC network of development communicators this week in Helsinki. Luckily, the prison in Katajanoka in Helsinki, where the participants were lodged, was just a former prison and had been turned into the nice hotel since. However, the hard work of communicators is very real. Communicators in development are those people, whose job it is to communicate to the public what the ministries and government agencies of OECD countries are doing in development cooperation. They seem to face three major challenges:

The first challenge is a negative perception of development cooperation in the general public. As Nick Perkins from IDS (UK) illustrated for the case of the UK, a majority of people in OECD countries are in favour of their governments to fight poverty in poor countries. At the same time, however, development cooperation is often perceived as being ineffective and marred by corruption.

Development cooperation is not really high in the agenda for most citizens in donor countries. The financial crisis, the reform of the education sector and the news of the football championship are more likely to attract attention. When it comes to development cooperation there is weariness and a lot of scepticm in the general public. Each time I talk about my work with a local shop assistant, my neighbour, the hairdresser and other people in my environment, the inevitable question is "But does aid really reach the poor people?" In the past aid agencies have used pictures of starving children, of drought-striken landscapes and empoverished farmers to touch the compassion of people and to justify their work. But we have seen starving children so many times. Aid agencies have asked for our donations for so many years. Why are things not changing?