Charity campaigners need to be bolder and braver

For IBT’s new report Charity campaigning – where next? Katie Tiffin talked to campaigners and social media experts about how charity campaigners can build on past successes and be more effective in the future.

Make Poverty History was a high point for charity campaigning. It mobilised thousands of people in the UK, including 225,000 demonstrators who marched in Edinburgh in the run up to the 2005 G8 summit. Although the campaign failed to eradicate poverty, leaders at the G8 made a series of important pledges, including increasing aid to Africa and writing off billions of pounds worth of debts. 

Since then charity campaigners have struggled to capture the public’s attention on the same scale. A recent campaign by international development charities failed to persuade the government to maintain its commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on UK aid. Crack the Crises, a campaign by a diverse coalition of organisations calling for G7 leaders to tackle Covid, injustice and climate change, also struggled to make an impact.

Despite these setbacks, other recent campaigns illustrate that campaigning can make a difference and the public is still receptive to charity campaigns. In 2020, a campaign publicly led by footballer Marcus Rashford and backed by a coalition of organisations forced the government to make a U-turn on its decision to stop providing free school meal vouchers to children during the summer holidays. There was an outpouring of public support for the campaign and thanks to the efforts of campaigners 1.3 million school children received free school meal vouchers. More recently, UK charities have responded quickly to the Ukraine crisis and found messages that resonate with the public.

Find the right message

Campaigns that present a clear and tangible goal, like the free school meals campaign, are more likely to succeed. A campaign by Shelter, one of the UK’s biggest housing charities, succeeded with its straightforward goal of pressuring the government to instate a complete ban on eviction proceedings so that renters would not become homeless during the pandemic. 

During the pandemic the public have responded well to messages of unity that highlight the need for a collective solution to a common problem. The People’s Vaccine Alliance’s message that ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’ has gained traction across a range of media outlets and led to over 13 million signatures on the campaign’s petition. Research by Climate Outreach,  a charity specialising in public engagement on climate change, suggests that this type of messaging during the pandemic has led to a shift in public attitudes and is likely to work well for campaigns on other issues, particularly climate change. 

Be bold

Social and protest movements like Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and #MeToo have shaken up the campaigning landscape. These bold and impactful movements have dominated the headlines, gained cut-through on social media and captured the public’s attention. Charity campaigners can learn a lot from what they have achieved. To stand out in this new campaigning landscape and achieve cut-through in a world of fast-moving news cycles and quickly changing social media trends charities need to be braver and less transactional in their campaigning. 

Prioritise the decolonisation agenda

International development charities have faced criticism for campaign messaging and imagery that reinforces negative stereotypes of lower income countries. Although many charities have already started discussing the decolonisation agenda internally, there’s still much work to be done on this. 

Going forward, charities should challenge themselves to ensure the principles of the decolonisation agenda are embedded in their campaigns. Time to Decolonise Aid, a report by Peace Direct, is a great resource for organisations and individuals wishing to decolonise their work. 

Social media

On the surface, social media platforms seem like a simple way to potentially influence millions of people in just a few hours. But few campaigns achieve genuine cut-through on crowded social media platforms. To succeed, charity campaigners need to understand what kind of content works best for different platforms, choose the right platform to reach their target audience as well as adopt new platforms and approaches more quickly.

Charities have sometimes been slow to take up new platforms like Tik-Tok and test new strategies for improving reach and engagement on social media, such as working with micro-influencers. Charity campaigners can follow the examples of British Red Cross and Citizen’s Advice, two organisations using TikTok to connect with new audiences. 

Our report Charity Campaigning – where next? will be published on April 26th. If you are not a member of IBT and would like to attend the launch event please email katie@ibt.org.uk.

Briefing Notes: BBC Africa

Speaker

Nick Ericcson, Head of Planning, BBC Africa nick.ericcson@bbc.co.uk

BBC World Service has changed a lot in recent years – now it is ‘digital first’ so online comes first. Usually, an online piece will run with either a TV piece or a radio one. They are now doing more on social media – Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Still working out how to get the best out of Tik Tok.

Digital helps them to achieve the goal of reaching a younger, more female audience. In the past, the BBCWS appealed to older men who had an interest in global politics. Now it is aiming to reach a different demographic with some success. 39% of their audience is now female and a similar percentage are aged 18-25. Still a long way to go but heading in the right direction.

There’s a big emphasis on the language services as a way of reaching new audiences who may be less urban and less educated.

BBC Africa still has the goal of telling African stories in a different way – the main way they achieve this is by having African reporter. So you will now see an African reporter on the Ten O’Clock News, Newsnight and Today. This would not have been the case a decade ago. Having this profile on linear output is still important but digital is now more important.

A digital first approach brings them closer to their audience – they use audience data much more extensively to find out what their audience is interested in, so journalism is much less top down. There is a shift in power, Nick says, so the audience has more control.

They are also using digital to try new ways of storytelling. Africa Eye with its open access investigations is a good example of this, sharing content with the audience as the investigation moves forward. Content is repackaged and repurposed for different audiences so a 30 minute Africa Eye documentary will be shown on YouTube and then a shorter version on TV news, radio and online – and a Twitter thread.

Nick’s team is in charge of planning and they will keep in touch with the genre teams who are the main content commissioners. They will cream off the best stories and share these more widely. English language versions will be produced and then shared with the different language services.

Their main programmes are Focus on Africa Radio and TV, Swahili TV, and then Somali, Hausa and Afrique.

There has been a big effort in BBC News to modernise the commissioning process so that several reporters are not sent to cover the same story for different programmes. These changes are taking place in domestic news, not in the World Service, as they were already doing that. It’s true that the range of stories covered has fallen as a result of these changes but it does mean that when a story runs it is likely to be shown in more places and reach a bigger audience.

BBCWS has set itself the target of reaching 500m people by the end of 2022. It is currently hitting 488m. Their biggest audiences are in India, US, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania.

Pitching

Nick advises to pitch to him and he will respond and/or pass on to the relevant team. Please send proposals well in advance and if you are suggesting studio guest they are more likely to say yes to women as they are aiming for a 50-50 gender split of experts. Let him know if you have B roll. They are keen to collaborate on any report where you are gathering new evidence – they did this successfully with Human Rights Watch.

MG 22.3.22

Watch in full: briefing with BBC Africa

The media has a huge responsibility as it reports the war in Ukraine and the likely movement of millions of refugees

Media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has played a crucial role in helping us to understand a rapidly changing situation. Now, with millions of Ukrainians on the move, we need to ensure that the media does not feed into negative, racist or stereotypical rhetoric with regard to refugees, writes Kim Nelson.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked us all. It could risk human suffering on a scale that Europe has not seen this century. It has been deeply alarming to hear reports of the mounting civilian death toll, the targeting of hospitals, residential areas and schools, and the massive displacement within Ukraine and beyond.

People are now fleeing for their lives. The UN estimates that more than half a million people have fled to neighbouring countries, with more than 140,000 people displaced within the country. As the conflict escalates, these numbers will inevitably increase.

We, at the International Rescue Committee, are already preparing for the worst.

As I write this, my colleagues in Poland are working quickly to mobilise resources and connect with partners to establish a response to support civilians forced to flee their homes.

Bearing witness has been heart wrenching – at times, terrifying. The media coverage has been powerful in telling the stories of people whose lives have been shattered by conflict. We have all seen those desperate scenes of people sleeping in subways, families leaving their homes with next to nothing, walking for days and scrambling onto trains to find a path to safety. It has been difficult to watch sometimes.

I have a huge admiration for the journalists who are currently in Ukraine, and neighbouring countries, at times risking their lives to report on an increasingly volatile crisis. As an emergency unfolds, we must remember the crucial role that the media can play. In an age of disinformation, coverage has helped to cut through the noise and has aided our understanding of a rapidly changing situation.

The media hold a huge responsibility, of fair and factual coverage, but also of influencing hearts and minds.

It is imperative that media coverage of this crisis does not feed into negative, racist or stereotypical rhetoric with regard to refugees. At IRC, we believe everyone, regardless of race, nationality, gender or sexuality should be able to seek safety and through our work in over 40 countries around the world, we have seen the amazing, positive impact refugees have had on economies and societies in which they live.

Although the scale of the crisis can be overwhelming, it is important to remember that you can take action. Here are some steps you can take:

Speak out

Whilst we have already seen some commitments from this Government to welcome refugees from Ukraine, there is more that can be done. Last week the IRC joined others in calling for the UK to take more action. Raise your voice with us. Write to your local MP, calling on the UK government to welcome refugees from Ukraine.

Donate

As the humanitarian response ramps up, donations are sorely needed. The IRC has launched an emergency appeal to help support displaced families with critical aid. Donating to NGOs on the ground remains one of the best ways that people can support those that need it most.

Get informed

Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, even before the latest escalation of violence, the conflict has left 3,000 people dead, displaced 850,000 Ukrainians from their homes, and placed 3 million people in need of humanitarian aid. The current conflict has the potential to be the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades. Get up to speed on the situation here.

Raise your voice

Whether it is on social media or on the streets, raise your voice and stand with the Ukrainian people. Share our message of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, or keep an eye out for community vigils which are being organised across the country.

Kim Nelson is Communications officer with the International Rescue Committee. You can follow Kim on Twitter @K_A_Nelson

Briefing Notes: Reporting international development – where next?

Speakers

Sarah Johnson Guardian Development reporter sarah.johnson@theguardian.com

Yasir Khan Editor in Chief Thomson Reuters Foundation yasir.khan@thomsonreuters.com

Will Worley Devex UK correspondent william.worley@devex.com

Thomson Reuters

Yasir took over as Editor in Chief last year, before that he was with Euronews. He charted the change in journalism during Covid from being entirely office and telephone based to returning to travelling. Things were almost back to normal. Journalists were coming in to the office for 2 days a week. He said there was now an appetite for non Covid stories, as Covid fatigue had set in.

Since his arrival much has changed at TRF. Its close relationship with Reuters meant that its stories always went out on the wires and this was their main focus. Now they are digital first, focusing on web as this is where they think the growth will be. Their stories still go out via Reuters so you will see them in newspapers around the world. Yasir has moved TRF away from following the daily news agenda and for the most part it will steer clear of this.

There are 3 main areas of focus: climate change, inclusive economies and technology and society. He is publishing a lot less and going for depth instead. New insights into key policy debates. New evidence. Stories that haven’t been touched on by other media. There are no hard and fast lines between these topics. Their audience is ‘purpose-driven professionals.’ They have lots of places where they can catch up the news – TRF are giving them depth and fresh insights. Their audience research indicates that this is what their audience wants. They are also keep on establishing a thought leadership role for themselves.

However, they did find that they gained an audience for stories on Afghanistan that no one else was covering – such as what was happening to beauty salons.

Guardian Development

Sarah joined the GD team last year and her brief covers human rights and global development. She has a particular interest in health and writing about non-communicable diseases. Travel is not yet back to normal. Sarah did make on trip since joining, to Kenya, where she worked with the Global Fund on a series of stories on TB, malaria and HIV.

The GD team consists of 3 full time reporters and one part timer with Tracy McVeigh as editor. The brief has changed under Tracy’s editorship – they are no longer mainly aiming at the GD community; instead they want to run stories that work for a mainstream audience. This means more human interest and human angles, more for example on the impacts of climate change on communities.

They are covering mainly low and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She’d like to do more on Latin America and more stories focused on one community but which are emblematic of bigger problems. Their agenda includes health, livelihoods, gender, equality, food security, migration and the climate crisis. They want to run stories that no other national newspaper is doing. Some popular stories on the site have been about the impact of Covid on tourism, an interactive story on Israeli bombing of Gaza, her own story on the little-known disease noma.

Devex

Will has spent most of the last two years reporting on the merger of the FCO and DFID and the subsequent cuts to aid. He has sometimes found it hard to get NGOs to go on the record if it involves criticising the government as they are worried about jeopardising future funding. Devex is much smaller that GD or TRF and they have a narrow focus. Their audience is people working in international development, for UN agencies, for charities, in government or think tanks. Global health is a big part of their agenda so they devoted a lot of resources to covering the impact of Covid in developing countries.

Decolonising language

A question was asked about whether these media outlets were talking about decolonising language in the same way as the development sector is. All the speakers said that they thought carefully about the language they used – for example the term refugee or migrant and that there was nothing new to this. It was clear that they had not taken on board some of the more recent debates about language which Bond is leading on. There may be an opportunity for a fruitful dialogue between the media and development sectors – it would be good to know what IBT members think about this.

MG, 22.2.22

Watch in full: Reporting international development – where next?

Five tips on how to make your communications more accessible

One of the key challenges for all charities is making their communications as accessible as possible to a range of audiences. We asked Christine Fleming from CharityComms to share her top tips.

Great communication should be about connecting with people. It has the power to educate, inspire and empower others to go out and forge their own connections. So making comms as accessible as possible for everyone is incredibly important.

CharityComms is lucky enough to be in a position where we get to talk with charity communicators every day. They share insights about the projects they are working on and the challenges they face, and one topic that kept coming up was accessibility. So when the opportunity arose we were delighted to be able to work with our charity network to create a new ‘Accessible Communication’ resource.

Hopefully the resource will act as a starting point for building more accessibility into everyone’s comms – including our own. We also want it to spark conversations about this important topic so that we can all pool our knowledge and learn together. Everyone’s needs, and preferences, for absorbing information are different so ensuring comms are as accessible as possible makes sense if we want to be heard.

The Accessible Communication resource draws on the expertise of those in the charity sector who are already doing great work in this area. Here are their top tips:

1. Use plain English

This came up time and again when speaking to contributors.

Try to use simple sentences that avoid jargon, abbreviations and acronyms. An easy way to check for this is using a free tool like the online hemingwayapp which will flag any areas of improvement for you to look at.

2. Check your contrast

This is something that actually came up for CharityComms itself as part of creating the accessible communications resource. It’s important to check the contrast between a background and the text that it has on it. If the contrast between the two things is not high enough then people may not be able to read it. One recommendation we were given was to use the WebAIM: Contrast Checker to help us check.

3. Think about screen reader users

Lots of people use screen readers not just the visually impaired, so make sure that your content works with them. The best advice we were given was to download one of the free screen readers that are available and experience what someone using one to access our communications experiences for ourselves.

4. Don’t forget about social media

With social platforms being such a core part of communications activities these days its important to make things accessible here too. This means making sure there is alt text on images, subtitles on videos, any gifs used don’t flash more than three times per second, and CamelCase is used in hashtags. And that is just a start, take a look at RNIB’s piece in the guide for more tips and advice.

5. Always remember the importance of representation

The best way to understand the needs of others is to ask those with lived experience what they need and be ready to listen. What we learnt from our contributors was that internal inclusion groups can be invaluable in helping you understand how to make your comms more accessible.

If you have people in your organisation with accessibility needs, have a conversation with them first. And ask your audience to feedback so that you know what you need to improve in order to make things easier. It is not their job to educate you but they can help act as a sounding board.

As we say in the Accessible Communication resource, this is just the start of the conversation. At CharityComms we, like you, are on the journey to more accessible comms and we are excited to rise to the challenge. Making things more accessible benefits everyone and we can’t wait to hear what other people are doing to make this happen and to learn together as a sector.

Christine Fleming is Head of Digital Content at CharityComms

How the fight against Covid has undermined the progress that was being made in tackling malaria

Deaths from malaria have soared as the Covid-19 pandemic has diverted resources away from the battle against one of the world’s deadliest diseases. It’s time for the media to tell the malaria story with renewed vigour, argues Rhona Elliott.

Malaria is one of the world’s oldest, deadliest diseases, stealing young futures and claiming the life of a child every minute – that is 700 children dying every day. Before the Covid-19 pandemic half of the world’s population were already living with the threat of malaria and, despite promising progress since the beginning of the millennium, the parasite had already started fighting back.

Malaria persists in high-burden communities, and years of plateaued funding and under-prioritisation, new threats from the natural world, such as growing drug and insecticide resistance, and other humanitarian emergencies, have slowed progress against the disease and sparked fears of resurgence. The emergence of Covid-19 was only going to make the fight against malaria even harder.

Despite Covid-19, malaria prevention campaigns have continued

Tremendous collective efforts ensured that more than 90 per cent of malaria prevention campaigns moved forward in 2020, but new figures in the latest World Malaria Report reveal that there were an estimated 241 million malaria cases and 627, 000 malaria deaths worldwide in 2020 – the highest number in nearly a decade. This represents around 14 million more cases in 2020 compared to 2019, and 69,000 more lives lost to this easily preventable and cheaply treatable disease, with approximately two-thirds of these additional deaths linked to disruptions in the provision of malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment during the pandemic.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to carry the heaviest malaria burden, accounting for about 95 per cent of all malaria cases and 96 per cent of all deaths in 2020, with around 80 per cent of deaths in the region among children under five years of age.

How media coverage of Covid has impacted on reporting about malaria

Over the past two years, Covid-19 has dominated global and regional news cycles, raising concerns that reporting on the pandemic would overshadow coverage of malaria, and other high-burden diseases. We cannot deny there have been – and continue to be – additional barriers as we try to  secure media coverage for malaria, especially when new developments such as Covid-19 vaccine milestones or emerging variants take precedent.

However, the impact of Covid-19 has generally had a positive impact on news reporting and public interest in stories about global health security and pandemic preparedness. Covid-19 has proved beyond doubt that our world is more interconnected than ever and reinforced the fact that disease outbreaks and the state of health systems in one country can easily impact another.

Public perceptions of global health have permanently changed

Audience interest has increased and people are now more aware of basic disease epidemiology and vaccine development, for example, scientific jargon such as the ‘R number’, ‘efficacy ratings’, and ‘contact tracing’ are no longer understood only by experts. Global interest in coverage of new malaria vaccines has also been huge. News coverage of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute R21 malaria vaccine showing 77 per cent efficacy in Phase 2 clinical trials, and the GSK-developed RTS, S vaccine becoming the first ever malaria vaccine to be recommended for use by the WHO, hit headlines around the world in ways we have never seen before.

The Draw the Line campaign won awards at both The Drum Awards and the World Media Awards. Image credit: Malaria No More

The ‘Draw The Line Against Malaria’ campaign

In February 2021, Zero Malaria Starts With Me launched a brand new, Africa-first campaign ‘Draw The Line Against Malaria’ to help shine a spotlight on the malaria fight.  Reflecting the energy, talent and culture from across the continent, with references to art, fashion, music, sport and entertainment, this new youth-focussed creative campaign sought to galvanise young people from across the African continent, and around the globe, to call on their leaders to prioritise malaria while continuing to fight Covid-19.

Brought to life through a powerful short film starring some of Africa’s biggest changemakers, including Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge, South African rugby captain Siya Kolisi and Nigerian actress Omotola J Ekeinde, this campaign has inspired young people to be the generation to ‘draw the line against malaria’.

At the heart of the campaign is a beautiful, universal visual language made up of lines, symbols, and patterns called ‘Muundo,’ which was created by Láolú Senbanjo, a Nigerian visual artist and musician, and Art Director for the campaign. The Muundo has become an ever-growing crowd-sourced mural on which people can add their own stamp by visiting zeromalaria.org and drawing their own line against malaria. Later this year, the Muundo will be presented to world leaders as a rallying cry for increased action in the fight against malaria.

Increased media coverage has reflected audience interest in the campaign

Since the campaign launched, thousands of people have drawn the line against malaria, and we’ve seen our key audiences connecting with the Muundo language and using the power of the unique artwork to drive real change in their communities and countries. This award-winning campaign has so far resulted in 1.4 billion impressions around the world to date and achieved more than 24 million digital engagements.

There have been broadcast pieces aired on CNN, Sky News and MTV Base, as well as on local radio stations in rural Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Rwanda, and print pieces in global and regional media outlets including Global Citizen, BBC World Service, BBC Africa, The Standard, Kenya, and Al Jazeera, to billboards in Lagos Airport or beside busy roads in Kigali, full-page adverts in GQ and African influencers Instagram pages. Draw The Line has captured the imagination of young people to take a stand against malaria. Now, we need the media to keep telling the story of malaria with renewed vigour.

Rhona Elliott is a Communications Officer at Malaria No More UK.

Five things you need to know about vaccine (in)equity in Africa

Many months ago, the UN chief, Antonio Guterres, warned the world that we needed to accelerate the global rollout of vaccines. ‘In an interconnected world, none of us is safe until all of us are safe’ he said. But the world did not listen. And one continent above all is paying the price for this dereliction of global leadership: Africa. We asked Jackie Kiarie and Steve Murigi from Amref, Africa’s leading health NGO, to tell us what has gone wrong.

If the number of COVID-19 vaccines produced in 2021 had been fairly distributed, every country in the world could have reached the WHO’s target of 40% coverage by the end of September. 

Instead, many wealthy nations are well into the delivery of third doses, with some making plans for a fourth, while lower-income countries remain largely unprotected – putting lives at risk and creating the conditions for the emergence of variants such as Omicron.

The disparity is particularly acute when it comes to Africa. At the time of writing (late January 2022), less than 10% of Africa’s population was fully vaccinated. If we consider that definitions of “fully vaccinated” are being rewritten to include booster shots, that number plummets to around 1%.

There are encouraging signs: shipments to Africa – through COVAX (the mechanism set up to ensure equitable access to vaccines globally), AVATT (Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, an initiative of the African Union), and bilateral deals and agreements – are increasing. Supplies are becoming more reliable: but they remain insufficient. And while supply is critical, it’s not the only challenge standing in the way of improved vaccination rates.

As Africa’s leading health NGO, we’d like to see the UK media take a more nuanced approach when reporting on these complex challenges. Here are five key points we’d like to see highlighted more often.

1. COVID-19 is one of many infectious diseases threatening lives and livelihoods across Africa

At the time of writing, the continent is facing outbreaks of dengue, Lassa fever, cholera, and measles. In many contexts, these outbreaks co-exist with humanitarian emergencies, such as conflict and displacement in the DRC and Cameroon, or flooding in South Sudan, putting unbearable pressure on already over-stretched health systems and the people who staff them.

African countries don’t have the luxury of choosing which public health emergency to prioritise. If anything, this makes increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Africa – including among frontline health workers – all the more urgent.

2. Wealthy nations must go beyond increasing the number of doses they are sharing: they must commit to providing doses that are useable

We have seen a lot of examples of wealthy nations – the UK among them – congratulating themselves on the number of doses they have donated to less affluent countries. And while successes should be celebrated, it’s also important carefully and critically to examine these claims.

In reality, wealthy nations have failed to follow through on their commitments. Of the doses that are being shared, especially through mechanisms such as COVAX, many have extremely short lifespans and are due to expire months or even weeks after they arrive in the recipient country. This makes it challenging for governments and health workers to distribute the doses equitably and mobilise communities to receive the jab, increasing the risk of wastage – and resulting in further negative news coverage condemning African countries that destroy unused doses. (Particularly galling when the UK has recently destroyed thousands of booster vaccines due to lack of demand.)

Donor countries must commit to sharing doses with longer lead times to allow adequate time for deployment. Until they do, they are setting recipient countries – many of whose health systems are already over-stretched – up to fail.

3. Media reports should paint a broader, more holistic picture to improve public understanding of what it takes to roll out a vaccination programme in a country whose health system is already under pressure

Remember, too, that COVAX’s responsibility stops at the port. Challenges related to logistics, infrastructure and capacity stand in the way of vaccines “reaching the last mile” and getting into people’s arms. In many African countries, very few health facilities are equipped to administer the vaccine. Myths and misinformation result in vaccine hesitancy; many health workers have not received the training they need to calm people’s fears and increase uptake. It can be hard to ensure that doses are stored safely and in the correct conditions. It is challenging to get doses from entry points to remote regions, especially when time is of the essence and expiry dates fast approaching.

Covid vaccination rollout in Uganda. Photo credit: Amref Health Africa

4. Vaccine hesitancy is a challenge – but it’s not the only, nor the principal, obstacle to increasing coverage

Too many media reports frame vaccine hesitancy as the leading cause of low coverage in Africa. And while hesitancy is a challenge, as it is in other parts of the world – including wealthy nations – it is not the primary reason that people in Africa are not getting vaccinated.

Amref staff working across the continent consistently find that when vaccines are available, people are lining up to receive them. The challenge lies in securing those doses, and then in bringing them closer to communities: getting them to the places where people are doing business and going about their lives.

The best advocate for a vaccine is someone who has received one: so the lack of access to vaccines only feeds hesitancy. A person who has had a positive experience of vaccination can share that experience and encourage others. In a similar way, if someone living in a remote area walks for several hours to the nearest health facility hours – or spends their last shillings on transport – only to find there are no vaccines available, they will share their disappointment and are unlikely to go back. Tackling myths and misinformation is a key component of any vaccination drive, and frontline health workers are an indispensable resource.

5. COVID-19 vaccine inequity shines a light on global health inequity more broadly

In the words of WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “If we end inequity, we end the pandemic”. COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated inequities in access to health care and services, not just between but within countries. These inequities have had a devastating impact on the rollout of the vaccine. Across the African continent (and indeed around the world), there is inequity not only in access to the vaccine, but in access to reliable information about the vaccine. Case management is being hindered by acute shortages of PPE as well as limited oxygen supplies.

On top of this, African countries are experiencing a decline in the provision of other services as resources are diverted to pandemic response and crisis management. Routine, life-saving services like antenatal care, childhood immunisation programmes, HIV testing, and the testing and treatment of tuberculosis have all been affected. The consequences of this disruption will outlast the pandemic. We need to be thinking beyond COVID-19 and strengthening health systems in anticipation of the next public health emergency.

Meanwhile, if large swathes of the world’s population remain unprotected, booster programmes will not keep wealthy nations safe from emerging variants. The longer it takes for wealthy nations to realise this, the more distant the prospect of a return to “normal”. It serves no-one to point fingers at the Global South when wealthy nations are stockpiling, falling short of their commitments to provide more doses, failing to act on the WHO’s recommendations to prioritise global primary vaccinations over national boosters, and ignoring calls for pharma companies to share the technology that would allow these nations to manufacture their own supplies.

Even as COVID-19 slips down the UK news agenda, we – as consumers of news and global citizens – must keep up pressure on those with the power to change the pandemic’s trajectory. We need to move away from the scarcity mindset that sparks fear and fuels unhelpful practices such as stockpiling. If efforts to vaccinate the world are grounded in the principles of equity and fairness, we will find that there is enough for everyone.

What can you do?

• Sign Amref Health Africa’s petition calling for an end to vaccine injustice
• Support Amref Health Africa’s ‘Vaccine Solidarity with Africa’ campaign

Authors: Jackie Kiarie, Regional Programme Manager, Global Health Security, Amref Health Africa HQ and Steve Murigi, Head of Programmes and Strategic Partnerships, Amref Health Africa UK

Watch in full: COP26 – where next for the media?

You can access Gaby’s presentation on BBC’s post COP26 audience research here. Please not this presentation is for IBT members only and not for mass distribution.

Briefing Notes: COP26 – where next for the media?

Speakers

Sarah Whitehead, deputy head of newsgathering, Sky News sarah.whitehead@sky.uk

Angela Dewan, international climate editor, CNN angela.dewan@warnermedia.com

Matt McGrath, environment correspondent, BBC News matt.mcgrath@bbc.co.uk

Jack Lundie, director of campaigns and engagement, WWF jlundie@wwf.org.uk

Gaby Hornsby, TV lead sustainability, BBC gaby.hornsby@bbc.co.uk

COP26

In the first part of this session we reviewed the media coverage of COP26.

Sky News – Sarah said that Sky had understood that this was a real moment and they had launched their climate change daily news programme in April with a weekly podcast and a beefed-up team of reporters and producers. They wanted to report on daily changes and developments on the issue, bring a climate change angle to mainstream stories and search out some solutions. During COP they launched a dedicated Climate Live channel. And there were reports from around the world including Mark Austin in Brazil and Alex Crawford in Madagascar. There was also a commitment to following the impact on the ground in Bangladesh.

CNN – Angela said that CNN also recognised that climate change had ceased to be a niche issue and had gone mainstream. They too expanded their team of reporters and writers. She found that the CNN audience was less interested in the machinations of COP and more interested in how climate change was impacting on communities around the world. The audience was also keen to see CNN holding companies and governments to account.

BBC – Matt said it was hard to get across to audiences the importance of COP. One of their successes was explainers on key issues which proved very popular with audiences. Ros Atkins specialised in these and has spoken of what he calls ‘assertive impartiality.’ Matt, like Angela, felt that audiences were interested in accountability.

WWF – Jack reflected on media coverage from the point of view of WWF, saying that the media played a key role in ensuring that climate promises made in the run up to COP were kept. He praised the media’s commitment to covering climate change which made it easier for WWF and other campaigners to get their message across. However, the question remained as to the wider impact of media coverage. WWF is working on the assumption that politicians and governments are more likely to keep their promises on tackling climate change if the media is holding them to account.

The audience

Gaby shared the BBC’s audience research which tracked UK attitudes to climate change at three points in the year – July, October and late November. She will speak to colleagues about whether she is able to share her slides with attendees. But, if you wish to see the slides, just watch the recording of the event. Gaby is the fifth speaker.

Six out of 10 people said that climate change was important or very important to them and this was true across all ages, gender and demographics. In July audiences cared about COP but had very little understanding of the summit – by the time it took place they had a much clearer understanding of its importance and the topics that were covered, especially deforestation, fossil fuels and carbon emissions.

Audiences demonstrated a high level of understanding on some headline issues – renewable energy, deforestation and climate change. There was good understanding of carbon footprint. But there was much less understanding when it came to more technical aspects such as sustainable infrastructure. COP produced higher levels of understanding – for example those who said they understood net zero went up from 49 to 60%.

Once COP had finished there was some drop in public understanding of climate change – from 82 to 75%, perhaps because audience had come to realise how complicated it was. There was no sign of environmental fatigue after COP with 59% of respondents saying they wanted to hear more, compared with 50% in July.

Audiences were asked which aspects interested them the most. They said they wanted to know what they could personally do to make a difference; they wanted to hear more positive stories; and they wanted to see governments held to account.

Overall, audiences felt that they had a broad understanding of climate change but lacked knowledge about the detail. They felt that the media was not doing a good job of holding governments, companies and policy makers to account.

Gaby also shared with us the IPSOS MORI poll in which members of the public identified the issues that were of most concern to them. In November, after COP climate change/the environment/pollution was the top issue on 40%. By December this had fallen by an astonishing 27 percentage points to 13%, its lowest point.

Gaby said that there were two key groups that had a lower understanding – young people and CDEs. This presented an opportunity for the media, although it might be hard to bring specialist content to these audiences.

Climate change pledge

Gaby also told us about the pledge by the Sky, the BBC and other public service broadcasters to beef up their coverage of climate change across a range of genres. In all areas of commissioning, commissioners would have a conversation with producers about how climate change could be included in editorial content. Gaby said there was a need to upskill the creative community so that they had a better understanding of climate change and related issues. The broadcaster group is working together to see how they can best track the changes in content and any increase in audience understanding and engagement.

Where next for the media?

All the broadcasters spoke about their plans for coverage now and in the run up to COP27.

Sky – Sarah wanted more stories about the impact of climate change and how to ensure accountability on a regular basis. Timeliness was key and pitching to the right person. Email her and she will put you in touch with the right person.

CNN – Angela was planning to do less but hoping that this would have more impact. She was open to all good stories with a fresh angle and also keen to do more on accountability. Email her your pitches.

BBC – Matt said the BBC would continue as before and there would be more explainers, more embedding of climate change across the full range of news stories and more investigations and attempts to hold those to the promises made at COP. He advised planning a long time ahead when approaching the BBC. Bring him case studies rather than issues. Bring him stories that illustrate the impact of climate change and look for ways of helping the audience to connect emotionally.

MG, 25.1.21

Why continuing media coverage of climate change is essential

2022 is another hugely important year for tackling the climate emergency, with COP27 taking place in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in November. Kai Tabacek attended COP26 and believes that it marked a sea change in media reporting of climate change. But, he argues, we need to ensure that the voices of those worst affected by climate change continue to be heard.

The UK hosting COP26 was always going to be a huge opportunity. Not only was it the largest international summit the UK has ever hosted, but the first true test of the Paris Agreement: would governments live up to their promise to ratchet up emissions cuts? Would it be enough to keep global warming below the 1.5°C doomsday level? As the inevitable news arrived in early 2020 that COP26 was to be postponed by a year, it sometimes felt as though COP26 could never live up to the hype.

Oxfam’s aim was to highlight how climate change is making global poverty worse

Not only to ensure the voices of people already facing the emergency are heard, but to back the policies we know will make a difference: faster and deeper emissions cuts, huge increases in financial support for adaptation and compensation for the losses and damage that have already happened. Our smaller-than-usual delegation brought together colleagues from nine countries and included Margaret Masudio, a small-scale farmer from Uganda. We began and ended the summit with stunts in Glasgow’s beautiful Royal Exchange Square – using our ‘Big Head’ caricatures of world leaders to highlight their lack of action. Among the many excellent reports published around COP26, Oxfam revealed the huge inequality between the emissions of the world’s wealthiest and poorest citizens, and how this is putting 2030 targets at risk.

Despite being hailed as the world’s “last best chance” to avert climate catastrophe, by the time world leaders touched down in Scotland expectations were already dismally low. It was clear that the carbon reduction pledges (so-called NDCs) were not enough, and that the long-held goal for rich countries to provide $100 billion in climate finance per year was still out of reach. By the end of COP26, and despite the Government hailing the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’ a success and a flurry of announcements on coal, petrol cars and deforestation, it was clear the summit did not deliver on the most fundamental issues.

There were some glimmers of hope

Setting a specific target for adaptation finance was huge. For years, wealthy governments have been far more willing to fund poorer countries to reduce their meagre emissions instead of helping them take action to adapt to stronger storms, rising seas, scarcer water and less fertile land. Seeing the Scottish Government (after intensive lobbying by Oxfam Scotland) pledge money for Loss and Damage to alleviate the impacts of climate change on some of the world’s most vulnerable communities – the first government to do so – was historic. The commitment by governments to come back with stronger carbon reductions next year – and not in five years – was at least an admission that current targets are completely inadequate. It was also encouraging to see fossil fuels mentioned in the final text, although scarcely believable that this didn’t happen sooner.

A sea change in media reporting of climate change

Putting aside the concrete outcomes, what did COP26 mean for people like us in the business of communicating climate change? Personally, I feel there’s been a sea change in the UK. It wasn’t so long ago that climate change was part of the ‘science correspondent’ beat (often rolled in with health). Today you would struggle to find a national outlet that doesn’t have a climate or environment correspondent, and many outlets (Sky News, the Mirror, the Sun, Independent, Daily Express) have launched dedicated shows or sections of their websites.

COP26 made wall-to-wall headline news – not just at the end but for two weeks. But as well as the usual coverage you would expect (the previews, protests, outrage at leaders flying in and the length of Biden’s motorcade, the diplomatic spats and the race for the finish) it was heartening to see broadcasters reporting what is at stake: David Shukman’s excellent report on the effects of climate change on one Bangladeshi woman over a decade, Lindsey Hilsum on how climate change is fuelling conflict and extremism in Niger and Alex Crawford on the world’s first climate-induced famine in Madagascar.

Climate change is no longer a niche subject for the media

But perhaps most encouraging of all was seeing informed mainstream coverage of subjects that have hitherto been restricted to the pages of the Guardian, Reuters Foundation and Carbon Brief. Articles over the final weekend emphasised the need to “keep 1.5 alive”. The last-minute wrangles over language on coal and fossil fuels cast unwanted attention on the blockers and the fossil fuel lobbies that have been so successful at preventing this in the past. The greater scrutiny of climate finance – and the leadership shown by Scotland on Loss and Damage – may mean that wealthy governments can no longer make vague and misleading pledges without facing scrutiny.

All of this is encouraging, but the real test is yet to come. Have the past two years been an aberration? Will news outlets quietly drop their climate correspondents, recognising the PR opportunity is over? There is plenty to report in year ahead: A looming climate crisis in the Horn of Africa, three landmark reports from the IPCC, updated NDCs and of course the ‘African COP’. All of us have our work cut out to ensure reporting on climate issues is sustained – not only to hold governments and businesses to account for the pledges they have made, but also to report on the real-world impacts. As our colleagues and delegates from far-flung countries head home, we also have the challenge of ensuring they are not forgotten – that journalists continue to report on their experiences and listen to them – not only as ‘colour’ but as experts and analysts.

Kai Tabacek is a Senior Press Officer with Oxfam 

The challenge of making your voice heard

Social media is becoming increasingly competitive and it’s often hard to get the right mix between scheduled and reactive content. We asked Taome Bamford-White from the International Rescue Committee UK (IRC) to give us her top tips.

In the last year our reactive content has outperformed our scheduled content, and we’ve seen some of the best engagement figures and highest performing posts, gaining nearly 10,000 new followers across networks. 6,500 of these were on Instagram. So how do we do it?

Researching and monitoring trends

The first step is making space to track, research and monitor trends. Carving out capacity is essential to find those golden moments where your messaging aligns with a trending topic:

• Block out some time in your calendar during the morning to prioritise looking across your social channels, pick up recurring themes or trending hashtags and check them against messaging and moments in your organisation.
• Start twitter lists with partners, competitors and influential accounts in your main subject areas, have a scroll through to see what conversations are bubbling.
• Set up searches on Google Trendsto monitor trending topics on an expansive level. The tool uses search data, giving you a much broader picture of what is trending than you’d see on a single social network.
• Search keywords in Google news and create Google Alerts for any keyword you want to watch, so you will always know what is happening. Finding and sharing news that has positive stories on refugees has been very rewarding on Facebook for IRC UK.
• Sign up for listening tools to get an overarching picture. These are often paid for but might be available on platforms you already use. Sprout Social has a listening tab where you can set keywords and measure conversation. CrowdTangle is another tool some organisations use.

Reacting to trends and creating content

The second part of my approach is deciding how and when to react. Reacting can be something as small (but effective) as commenting on a post or quote retweeting. For example, all of the brands that used quote RT’s from the red flag trend, including one from Save the children, did really well because they were tapping into a cultural moment. and people are still using the red flags weeks later.

But the biggest bang for your buck would be to create a piece of content. This doesn’t always mean creating something new and fancy; it could be as simple as screenshotting a tweet and sharing it across other channels.

For example, last year, we shared a tweet from Lord Alf Dubs, an ex-MP and prominent leader in conversation around refugees. Likewise, you can share a quote with a stock image.

Another example, of how we tapped into a cultural moment was during the Euros this year. During my morning hour researching trends and conversations, I came across a post by Migration Museum which highlighted the diversity of the England Lions. This inspired us to create our own graphic that celebrated the powerful message of welcoming and celebrating different cultures.

This post went semi-viral and was replicated thousands of times on other platforms and accounts. Gaining the most traction on Instagram but significantly on Twitter and other channels too. We shared it just before England played in the semi-final and in the same week visits to our landing page through combined direct and Google search increased by 130% compared to the previous week.

We also followed this topic of conversation up with a case study style post about a father and son from one of our programmes enjoying watching the Euros.

This reactive tactic has worked time and time again for IRC UK during events including G7, the olympics and national topics of conversion such as women’s rights and the Afghanistan crisis. All of which have enabled us to use our technical expertise as an additional educational element to the content and has seen it perform really well.

Choosing when to react and if it is the right moment for your brand can be difficult. If you can, get a small team together to bounce ideas off, share trending moments between you and see if any part of your organisation is relevant to it. Reacting quickly or first can be really beneficial but it’s not always necessary, for example, we waited a week to post our Euros graphic whilst the tournament was ongoing.

These are just some of the different ways IRC UK have been able to react and tap into trends. Social media is an ever-changing landscape, and while planning and being prepared is important for strong and powerful digital communication, it is vital to have a team – with processes and structures – that allow for agile working and being reactive. And be aware sometimes that will mean being ready and prepared to drop scheduled content in favour of real-time interests and cultural moments.

Taome Bamford-White is a digital and social officer at International Rescue Committee.

A version of this blog originally appeared on the Charity Comms website

Watch in full: podcast peer learning session with Dear Lifesaver

Briefing Notes: podcast masterclass with British Red Cross

Speakers: Jude, Annie and Zaina

Jude explained that the podcast was the result of an existing relationship between the British Red Cross and the We are VOICES network, an independent organisation. The podcast was timed to coincide the BRC ‘every refugee matters’ campaign and to support advocacy around the new Borders Bill.

Jude pitched the idea to her colleagues. She had produced media content with the VOICES network but this was different, as refugees and asylum seekers would be the editorial leads. She got the go ahead with funding from the People’s Postcode Lottery and put together the team of around a dozen refugees who were working as ambassadors for the VOICES network. A freelance audio producer, Bridey, was hired.

They began by running a series of workshops for the refugees, training them in podcast production. They listen to a lot of other podcasts, searched out resources, practised with audio diaries etc and then started to talk about the content. It was agreed that each episode would be themed and constructed around a key moment – the heart of the story. There would be no overarching narrative.

Annie explained that the refugees themselves decided the issues that they wanted to talk about. They had several goals for the podcast. They wanted to change perceptions of asylum seekers – they came to the UK out of necessity, not choice. The theme for the series was ‘joy and happiness.’ They wanted the podcasts to feel celebratory.

Zaina explained how they looked for small details to tell stories – she wants a tennis partner but it’s hard because she keeps being forced to move.

The themes they explored included loneliness, journeys, family life, accommodation, everyday life, borders and mental health.

The producers wanted to create a team spirit where there was mutual trust and everyone felt able to share their stories.

The podcasts were aimed at an audience that wanted to know more about the plight of refugees and what their daily lives were like. Their research indicated that many people were supportive but did not have much idea of the actual experience of refugees arriving in the UK. The series has been successful with more than 4,000 downloads and many listeners have signed the BRC ‘every refuges matters’ pledge. The link to the pledge campaign has been important as it gave the podcast team access to comms support and the ability to share clips from the podcasts across social media. The podcasts were not a separate activity but integrated with a wider campaign.

There were some challenges in getting internal sign off for each episode but overall it was much easier than Jude expected. She had to avoid being party political or naming individual politicians as the BRC has to remain politically neutral but they were allowed to broadcast the views and experience of the refugees themselves, however critical of the system they were.

The three speakers shared some of the key lessons that they had learnt in making the podcasts.

Annie said that she had learnt the importance of listening skills, resilience, trust in the team and the process, to be open minded, mindful of yourself and others.

Zaina said that for here the key was collaboration at every stage and to hold onto her passion. Passion was important than having the right skillset.

Jude said that the key lessons for her were bringing a co-production ethos into every element of the production, creating openness, building trust, be ready to change your plans and to go off piste. Working with other BRC teams was a particular challenge as they did not share the co-production ethos.

Dear Lifesaver podcast

The masterclass was followed by a networking session. We invited the presenters of Islamic Relief’s new podcast, Dear Lifesaver, to share their experience. Sara and Nabilah explained how the podcast came about, and spoke about the format and target audience. The initial aim was to engage their Muslim supporters with key development issues. They wanted to take the audience on a journey of learning and to go on that journey themselves. The aim was to choose a simple format which was comfortable and accessible, with Sara and Nabilah interview one guest in each episode and then reflecting on some of the key themes that arose from the interview. They may experiment with other formats in later episodes.

MG

8.12.21

Watch in full: podcast masterclass with British Red Cross

COP26 – a personal view

Practical Action was given official observer status at the recent COP26 talks in Glasgow. We asked Silvia Maria Gonzales, their global communications officer, who is based in Lima, to write about the experience of attending her first climate change talks.

COP26 had been identified as one of our key moments of the year and our approach to it was discussed in numerous videocalls, emails and chats. Our strict national Covid19 restrictions made this the only way to communicate and engage with colleagues, so I had a real sense of excitement and freedom when I jumped onto a plane, got through 7 days of quarantine (Peru was one of the last countries on the UK Red List) and finally got on a train, and headed for Glasgow

This was my first time at the climate talks and my first time in the UK. So, as the world watched to see if commitments would be agreed upon and paths to action set, I prepared to link up all the experience from around a dozen Practical Action experts who attended COP26 and the transformative work that happens in our country offices, with a sense of uncontrollable excitement that only a Covid pandemic-style isolation can bring.

COP26 was a litmus test for Practical Action

The talks felt like a litmus test – both for me personally and for Practical Action as a whole. I knew we all needed to ace it if we were to get the results that the communities we work with really need, take Practical Action’s approaches and learnings to scale, and ultimately prove to ourselves our strength as global connectors.

Thousands of security staff and police officers lined the Glaswegian streets, climate protests erupted almost every day, UK news was dominated by the major announcements being made, and walking through the hallways was always an opportunity to spot VIPs meeting people from all parts of the world.

Time for a reality check

This excitement, though, needed a reality check. We, as an NGO, were observers of this process, but like most members of civil society and indigenous peoples, we were left outside the negotiating rooms. Although that made sense from a COVID perspective, these restrictions threaten the legitimacy of the summit outcomes.

It was also a reality check for what I could deliver to spark engagement. To follow the complex negotiations on a single topic and be able to keep up with the jargon and the different versions of the agreements, I would have needed to dedicate my entire job to COP throughout the year.

Fortunately, I had the incredible support of my COP-seasoned colleagues, who were part of their national government delegations in Nepal and Zimbabwe, set on contributing to the debate about Loss and Damage, Regenerative Agriculture and a Just Transition.

Another guiding light in this sea of talks was the Climate Action Network – CAN. Their daily meetings, media monitoring and exchange of information allowed me to frame all that was happening more broadly.

In the cloud forests of San Jose de Lourdes in Peru, coffee farmer Neymita and her husband are reversing the deforestation that has plagued the area for decades. Photo credit: Practical Action

What did Practical Action hope to achieve at COP?

For many countries and communities, dealing with the profound impact of climate change is the reality. That’s the case for all of the communities Practical Action works with.

COP allows us to bring our grassroots approach onto a global stage. It was crucial for us to share the fact that there are real people at the heart of all these complex dialogues and negotiations.

On the one hand, people are already facing the deepest impact of extreme climate events, losing their lives and livelihoods. But on the other hand, these same people are already miles ahead of their leaders – adapting, leading change and mobilising their communities and providing a thriving future for themselves and their neighbours.

We attended COP to amplify the voices of these people and our experts provided advice to country delegations to help them emphasise the impact of climate change and some of the adaptations and approaches that are available to help people cope.

Our specialists from Nepal, Zimbabwe, Peru and the UK provided evidence, participated in events and had conversations with donors, both in the publicly-accessible green zone and the delegates-only blue zone.

Was COP a success?

It is fair to say that our expectations weren’t met. Fossil fuel cuts, Loss and Damage funding, keeping the 1.5 degree target alive, and other crucial aspects needed more action and commitment. But all isn’t lost. World leaders did make commitments and showed signs of movement and will now have to meet these, pushing for faster action on fossil fuels, reforestation and adaptation. And the work plan for the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform provides hope that it will have local needs at its heart.

This hope, grounded on the strength and passion of the communities we work with, will fuel our goals. For me, it confirmed that our approach at Practical Action is needed now more than ever. And to achieve change, we will have to work together, making sure these needs and stories of successful adaptation reach as many people as possible.

Silvia Maria Gonzales is Practical Action’s Global Communications Officer.

Why COP26 means that public engagement matters more than ever before

The goal of keeping warming to 1.5C is still alive, but it’s on life support. And going forwards requires hope. So where is hope to be found? It has to be in the rising tide of concern about climate change around the world, and people’s desire to show up and be part of the solution, writes Robin Webster.

The media loves drama, and over the years many of the 26 COPs have delivered. The Glasgow talks fulfilled the brief, encompassing last minute negotiations, deadlines, tears and arguments over the exact textual meaning of ‘requests’ vs ‘urges’.

But Glasgow was different to many previous COPs in one key way: we are now in the era of delivery and not promises. Arguments over targets and negotiation texts can only get us so far. You can hear it in the restlessness of protestors outside the conference fence, you can hear it in the determination of young climate justice campaigners to make their voices heard, you can hear it in the words of delegates from the global south where rising temperatures are already hitting livelihoods and lives. There is an increasing impatience pressing at the gates. The question they are asking: ‘but what are we actually doing?’

1.5C, Glasgow and public engagement 

Research released during the conference shows that the plans countries have laid out so far for reducing emissions (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) still add up to a terrifying 2.4C of temperature rise by the end of the century.

We are now at 1.1 degrees of warming. Crossing the 2 degrees threshold is enough to put over 1 billion people under extreme heat stress; bleach over 99% of coral reefs; double the extinction of plant species and intensify the melting of sea ice in summer by 10 times, fueling up to 6 metres of sea level rise in vulnerable parts of the world. The Maldives Environment Minister, Aminath Shauna stated it baldly in the final plenary, “The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, for us, really is a death sentence”.

Theoretically at least, ‘1.5 is still alive’ after the negotiations. An agreement made in Glasgow – known as the Glasgow Climate Pact – requests that countries “revisit and strengthen” their climate pledges by the end of 2022. This may seem like a thin victory, but it wasn’t a given before the conference started, and it puts diplomatic pressure on governments to strengthen their plans over the next year.

As the Secretary-General of the United Nations put it during the negotiations, if 1.5 is still alive, it’s on life support. Changing the political, social and economic priorities of governments around the world to refocus on new, ambitious plans for COP27 to reduce emissions as fast as possible would be – will be – a momentous task.

But going forwards requires hope. So where is hope to be found? It has to be in the rising tide of concern about climate change around the world, and people’s desire to show up and take part. At this point in history, people who are willing to be central to societal transformation are needed around the world, to build a mandate for unstoppable change and hold governments to account.

This doesn’t just mean taking action on the streets – though that really matters, in countries where it is possible. The evidence shows that people are deeply influenced by those around us – what we see them doing, and the conversations we have in our lives. Public consent and public pressure go together in driving politicians to make change. The change we make, the change we ask for in our communities – even down to the conversations over the dinner table – all have to be part of that story.

In short: whole-society, meaningful ongoing engagement is needed to deliver the social change that will stir politicians to deliver better and stronger pledges.  And in 2022, it matters as never before.

Placing people at the heart of climate action

In November 2022, COP will take place in Egypt, which is situated  in one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, particularly impacted by water and food insecurity which is already being exacerbated by climate change. 2 degrees of temperature rise could have devastating consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods, in a country where nearly 30% of people rely on agriculture and desertification is rapidly spreading.

So governments will  return to the table in a country whose citizens face an existential threat to their survival, and answer the question: have you done enough? Are you willing to do enough? COPs aren’t just about the drama of the negotiators inside the halls any more. The answer to that question will only be yes if people around the world participate in making it so.

Robin Webster is Climate Outreach’s Senior Programme Lead in Advocacy Communications. You can follow Robin on Twitter @RobinWebs.

A version of this blog first appeared on the Climate Outreach website.

Briefing Notes: crisis comms

PLEASE NOTE: This is an off the record briefing – do not quote its contents to third parties

Speakers

John Orme, senior counsel, Porter Novelli john.orme@porternovelli.com

Sean Ryan, Director of Media and Corporate Comms, Save the Children s.ryan@savethechildren.org.uk

John’s advice

All crises are complex and difficult and they come when you least expect them, but John emphasised the importance of preparation, having systems in place, so that they could be dealt with quickly and effectively. A crisis is a badly managed issue – if it’s well managed it does not become a crisis. John said it was essential to anticipate what might happen and to ensure that you can respond speedily. He has a ‘one hour ready’ rule. You should be ready to respond within one hour of an issue arising. This may mean that you have to respond without having the full facts and without having sign off from everyone.

You can anticipate a variety of crises that may occur and prepare for them. These could involve safeguarding, behaviour of senior staff, concerns of people who have left the organisation or internal whistleblowers. You need to do a risk assessment but also look at your own vulnerabilities as an organisation. What are the roadblocks to an effective response? Is power devolved? Do you have a transparent culture? Do you respond well to criticism?

Stick to your values and respond according to them even if others are advising you to do differently. Be as open as possible, putting as much information out as possible, anticipate what is likely to happen next and prepare your response, be proactive rather than reactive. Try and encourage authentic voices to speak up on your behalf.

Sean’s experience

Sean spoke about three occasions when he had been in the media spotlight.

When he was Foreign Editor at the Sunday Times one of his reporters, Marie Colvin, was killed in Syria. Soon after he was informed, Al Jazeera told him they were running the story, so he had to inform the family, colleagues, manage the media response and think ahead to tackle logistical issues such as bring Marie’s body home and rescuing her injured colleague. He had no plan in place and was overwhelmed. He said that he learnt several lessons – above all, be prepared, have a system in place for dealing with a crisis, protect people who are dealing with the crisis as the pressure is intense, don’t neglect internal comms, it’s important to keep your colleagues fully informed. Sean also briefed a journalist when Vanity Fair started to investigate and he made the mistake of trusted the journalist who then used his words against him. It took them several weeks to gain control and feel that they were no longer on the defensive.

The next crisis that Sean had to manage was when ISIS bombed the Save the Children compound in Afghanistan. This time they got ahead of the story, briefing the BBC on the facts as far as they knew them. But then the Wall Street Journal wanted to publish a story in which ISIS accused Save the Children of evangelising in Afghanistan. Sean managed to persuade the Foreign Editor not to run the story as it would put all Save’s in country staff at risk.

The third crisis was when two senior managers at Save were accused of sexual misconduct. When the story broke, the two had already left the organisation but Save was accused of failing to hold them to account for their misbehaviour. The Chair of the Trustees set up a small group to handle the crisis which included Sean and an outside lawyer, but not the CEO who had to recuse himself as he had been a Trustee at the time of the allegations. The lawyer persuaded the group to take an aggressive stance against journalists and threaten legal action. This was a huge mistake and damaged Save’s relationship with journalists and proved counter-productive. Sean was told not to speak to journalists which also proved to be a big mistake. The lesson Sean learnt was that NGOs should engage with their critics and provide as much information as possible. Be very careful about how you come across in these situations. Stay true to your values.

MG, 16.11.21

Watch in full: crisis comms briefing

PLEASE NOTE: This is an off the record briefing – do not quote its contents to third parties.

Briefing Notes: Richard Greene from CNN

Key contacts

Guest booking cnniplanningteam@turner.com

Freedom Project lead leif.coorlim@cnn.com

Health cnnhealth2@turner.com

Senior news editor Lindsay.isaac@turner.com

International climate editor angela.dewan@cnn.com

Speaker

Richard Greene, Head of Content, CNN London Richard.greene@warnermedia.com

Overview

CNN International is a division of CNN. It has a similar relationship as BBC News with BBC World News. CNNI broadcasts globally outside the US to several hundred million homes although there are no precise viewing figures. Some of its shows are broadcast by the US network and vice versa and content is shared between the two, but CNNI is principally aimed at a global audience so each story is judged on its merits. The US network has much more of a US focus. CNNI recently led for example on the kidnapping of US missionaries in Haiti and on the murder of the British MP David Amess.

CNNI is known as a breaking news channel and this is what it does best. When there’s a breaking story it throws lots of resources at it. Part of Richard’s role is to encourage his colleagues to place these stories in a wider context, which is what audiences are looking for. The nature of breaking news is changing. But if there is a big story and you have a guest who can contribute get straight on to the guest bookers, who are part of the planning team. Guests are judged on their merits. Players are of more interest than commentators.

CNNI comes from London several times a day and in normal times they would want guests in the studio but currently they have no studio guests so anyone can contribute regardless of where they are.

Television is no longer the most important outlet. In the US live TV dominates but outside of the US, CNN’s online presence is equally important and they have a digital team in London. London is the largest CNN bureau outside the US and the hub for stories from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It employs around 30 people – producers, reporters, presenters, sports desk, photo desk, business team, climate team.

Pitches can go to Richard or one of the specialist teams.

What are they looking for?

Any story you pitch needs to have a topical angle or peg so that it feels like a story that is relevant now. This doesn’t mean that they don’t do features, but it does mean that any off-agenda story should have a strong peg.

Top issues

Each year CNN decides on the top issues that it wants to focus on in order to differentiate itself from the competition – this year there are prioritising the climate crisis, China, inequality, the new post-Covid world and global politics/identity.

Climate crisis – they will go big on COP and they will be devoting a lot of resources to it. The international climate editor, Angela Dewan, is based in London. Angela has said that she welcomes pitches from us, although she may be slow to answer. They are keen as part of their coverage of climate change to look at solutions so that the coverage is not all negative and bleak. At COP, they will seek to hold world leaders to account. Climate change pitches need to have a different angle or something new to say.

Inequality is another key topic for them – and they interpret this widely. For example whether billionaires should spend their money go into space or give to more deserving causes, can be seen as an inequality issue.

Whilst CNN is not a campaigning organisation it does sometimes do issue-related campaigns. One such campaign is the freedom project which looks at human trafficking. The campaign is ongoing.

MG, 21.10.21

Watch in full: Briefing with CNN

How charities can use Clubhouse

Clubhouse is one of the latest social media platforms to launch, but with a very different format from its competitors. Some charities have started to see the benefits of joining, writes Kirsty Marrins.

Clubhouse is a relatively new, audio-only social media platform which was launched in April 2020. It is essentially a social media platform where people can have live conversations grouped around topics. It’s been described as a mix of panel discussions, live podcasts and networking opportunities.

How does Clubhouse work?

When it launched, people could only join Clubhouse if they had been invited by an existing user – as it was still in beta. It came out of beta in July 2021 and is now available to everyone on both Android and iOS.

It’s really quick to sign up. Once you’ve joined, you are able to see who in your phone contacts list is on Clubhouse so you can follow them if you wish to. You’ll also be asked which topics you’re interested in, but I’d advise not picking too many as what happens is you’ll see lots of Rooms in those genres, but many won’t actually be of interest.

When you open the App, you’ll see what’s called ‘the Hallway’ and then different ‘Rooms’ that are taking place right then, based on who you follow and which interests you chose. You’ll be able to see the topic and how many people are in the Room. You can also use the search function to look for Rooms, people or Clubs on certain topics.

When you enter a Room, you will be on mute but will be able to hear the speakers who are on the ‘Stage’. There is the ability to raise your hand if you want to ask a question or contribute to the discussion but it’s up to the speaker whether they invite you up to the Stage. If they do, you will then be unmuted and able to speak. Once you’ve asked your question, or contributed, you can move back to the audience if you wish to.

The way the Room is organised is:

• The Stage – this is where the hosts and invited speakers are
• People followed by the speakers – if you’re followed by one or more of the speakers, you are closer to the stage (you’re still muted though)
• Others in the Room – this is anyone else who isn’t followed by one of more of the speakers

When in the Room, you can click on anyone’s profile picture, read more about them and follow them if you wish. If you’re finding a Room interesting, you can ‘ping’ in any of your followers who you think may enjoy the discussion. They will then be notified that you’ve invited them to join the Room.

The more people you follow, the more Rooms you’ll see in your Hallway when you open the App as you’ll see Rooms that people you follow are currently in.

Decided that you’re not really interested in the discussion taking place? You can leave the room by clicking on the ‘leave quietly’ button.

Can charities be branded on Clubhouse?

When it was in beta, only individuals could be on the App and not brands. So a workaround was that once you had hosted a Room three times, you could apply for a Club. And that’s where the branding could come in.

Now you can join as a brand, so your charity can not only have a presence on Clubhouse but can host Rooms and events too. The IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) is one charity that has a branded account on the App.

Opportunities for charities

I think Clubhouse offers individuals in charities the opportunity to network and to create Rooms based on topics around their expertise. For example there is the Social for Good Club which meets on Fridays at 5pm.

Not specifically charity related, but every weekday morning at 8am there is a Breakfast with brand, marketing and comms specialists, that is really interesting and often has great guests who have worked on brilliant campaigns.

I see Clubhouse as an opportunity to learn and to share expertise. And I think this is something charities have an abundance of in their areas of specialism and where a Q&A format would work really well. For example, take Cancer Research UK and all the staff and researchers involved in their work. There are so many discussions (or Rooms based around certain topics) they could have – from the latest research into breast cancer to how to support a friend who is going through chemotherapy.

Clubhouse recently announced a monetization feature (in beta) where people can send payments to creators. This is where I think it could get interesting for charities as you could host an exclusive and intimate ‘In conversation with’ Room with one of your celebrity patrons or frontline staff, for example, and ask people to pay a donation to be part of the conversation.

Top tips to get started

• Create an individual account and join some Rooms to get a feel for the platform and the different types of Rooms (panel discussion format, in conversation with, Q&A etc)
• Spend some time looking for people or Clubs who are similar to what you’re looking to use Clubhouse for, in a brand or professional capacity, and then see what works and what doesn’t
• Host a Room once you feel you’ve got a good idea of how Clubhouse works. You can even do a practice one with colleagues or peers as there is the option to create a closed Room.
• Create a charity account once you’ve got a strategic plan in place for how you’ll use Clubhouse for your charity.

One of the most interesting things about Clubhouse, for now at least, is their openness with their community. Every Sunday there is a Town Hall meeting with the founders where you can submit a question beforehand and they’ll answer it. They’ll also update you on new features and what they’re working on.

Poor accessibility

At the moment, a major problem with Clubhouse is its lack of accessibility to those who are deaf or have hearing impairments. There is no live captioning and it doesn’t even support Apple’s VoiceOver screen reader. From a visually impaired perspective, it doesn’t support text-resizing. So, in terms of accessibility, Clubhouse has a long way to go.

For more information on Clubhouse and how charities could use it, read Helen Olszowska’s article on Charity Digital.

Kirsty Marrins is a Digital Communications Consultant and Charity Comms Trustee. You can follow Kirsty on Twitter @LondonKirsty.

A version of this blog first appeared on the Charity Comms website.

Watch in full: social media training session two

You can access the slides from the session here.

This session covered:

• • Platform changes for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook and YouTube 
  • How to reach new audiences 
  • Team members’ social media presences 
  • Tone of voice – advanced tips 
  • How to piggyback on trending topics 
  • Advocacy management and strategy 
  • Crisis communications 
  • Dealing with trolls 
  • Accessibility on social media – advanced tips 
  • How to take an insights led approach to content strategy as a team 
  • How to create a compelling narrative about your organisation on social media 

Watch in full: social media training session one

You can access the slides from the session here.

This session covered:

• • Understanding your audience on social media and their needs 
  • How to be strategic and measure success on social media 
  • How to get more reach and engagement 
  • How to create low cost content 
  • Content pillars: what are they and how to use them 
  • Tone of voice- beginner to intermediate tips 
  • Accessibility on social media

How the ONE Campaign successfully harnessed the power of celebrities

Last year ONE persuaded an impressive array of celebrities to hand over their social media accounts to experts to campaign for a global response to the pandemic. Kate Critchley takes us behind the scenes of the campaign.

In the early days of Covid-19, governments understandably focussed on protecting their own populations. But as the virus spread around the world it soon became clear that a coordinated global response was urgently needed to ensure that no country was left behind.

The problem was that very few people were talking about a global response, and no one was taking a lead. So we launched the ‘ONE World’ campaign in April 2020 to push this up the agenda.

The challenge of using celebrities at such a sensitive time

Often the most effective way to get the word out is through the power of celebrity, but the environment was challenging at that point in time. As we went into lockdown, it quickly become apparent that although everyone was confined to their homes, some people’s lockdowns were, well, more comfortable than others… and celebrities were criticised for their ‘solidarity’ social media posts. Our artist and talent friends asked how they could support our campaign, but we knew that they couldn’t be the face of it – we had to be smarter about how to leverage their profiles and audience reach.

Another challenge at the beginning of the pandemic was the amount of misinformation and speculation circulating. People didn’t know who to listen to or trust. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we were on calls with some of the world’s foremost experts discussing what needed to happen to end the pandemic globally. That was our lightbulb moment. Our talent partners could help make sure the rest of the world heard directly from these same experts.

How the #PasstheMic campaign was conceived

And so, with our creative partners at Hive we created Pass the Mic – a social media campaign in which celebrities, with their combined followership of 400 million people, handed over their platforms to global health experts for them to share the facts. Our original goal was for 19 talent–expert pairings, but that number soon doubled as more and more volunteered to take part, enabling us to curate a diverse range of international and locally known pairings for audiences in Europe, Africa and North America.

By matching household names with experts, celebrities could lend their public profiles without being the focus, allowing experts to share insights and information that might not have landed on people’s timelines otherwise. Working with high-profile individuals, such as Penelope Cruz, Hugh Jackman and Michael Sheen got positive media traction, which helped boost public awareness of #PasstheMic, creating a virtuous loop.

In addition to handing over their social media platforms, some celebrities interviewed their expert on Zoom. Before we knew it, we were a fly on the wall as Julia Roberts chatted to Dr Anthony Fauci, David Oyelowo listened to Gayle Smith recounting her time as head of USAID when Ebola swept through West Africa, and Sarah Jessica Parker had tears in her eyes as Dr Craig Spencer told her stories from the emergency room in her beloved New York. By the end, each expert drew the same conclusion: if the world didn’t come together to end this pandemic everywhere, it wasn’t going to end anywhere.

Responding to the Black Lives Matter protests

As with all campaigns, we had unexpected challenges along the way. We had planned for one takeover every day for the length of the campaign. However, just over a week after launching, tragedy struck with the death of George Floyd and we knew we needed to change the course of the campaign to make room for the important Black Lives Matter conversations happening across social media. So, we halted the remaining takeovers, and instead opted for a two-day grand finale on 1 July – the six-month anniversary of the first reporting of Covid-19. Over the course of two days, all the remaining takeovers took place, which gave us another great media moment.

Pass the Mic was very successful for ONE, helping us reach a huge audience that we don’t usually speak to. The campaign achieved 87 million views of the video interviews and almost 4 million engagements on social media, with Instagram outperforming other channels. Millie Bobby Brown’s partnership with Aya Chebbi accounted for the most engagement, reach and views among takeover pairings.

Over a year later, it is common knowledge that the pandemic won’t end anywhere until it has been beaten everywhere, but despite positive noises from leaders, there has not been enough movement on ensuring global vaccine access, or that the economic impact of Covid-19 doesn’t undo years of development progress. Ensuring experts have the same reach as celebrities is no doubt something that will be needed again before we finally beat this virus for good.

Kate Critchley is ONE’s Executive Director of Communications and Content.

How the digital divide threatens the success and legitimacy of the COP26 talks

The digital divide is in danger of stifling the voices of those representing some of the communities likely to be worst affected by the impacts of climate change, argues Matt Wright.

In the run-up to this year’s vitally important UN climate summit (COP26), the creation of a Twitter account that provides mocking commentary of the technological issues being experienced by negotiators might not immediately seem significant.

After all, during the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve all become more reliant on digital technology to communicate and collaborate, as well as more accustomed to the various issues that arise. “I can’t hear you, you’re on mute” or someone cutting off mid-sentence when their internet drops out have become every bit as commonplace during meetings as a mobile phone going off or struggling to get a presentation working.

In the circumstances, a bit of light relief can go a long way. “Apologies for my dog snoring in the background” was one memorable contribution to the discussions at the pre-COP26 sessions of the subsidiary bodies, which took place completely online in early June.

But the snarky comments and humorous gifs also shine a light on a bigger issue. If a key purpose of COP26 is for all nations to come to a fair and equitable agreement on increasing the ambition to tackle climate change, how is that possible when negotiators from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have less opportunity to get their points across whether in person or online?

Transferring inequality online

There was already huge inequality in the UNFCCC process when climate diplomacy was carried out at in-person meetings, with the world’s poorest countries struggling to make their voices heard in the power games of international relations. From the number  of the negotiators available to the facilities with which they are provided, blocs such as the LDC Group are constantly battling against the odds.

In parallel, there is a huge digital divide between countries whose populations largely benefit from internet that is widely accessible, cheap and reliable, and those where that’s far from the case. Having to conduct negotiations remotely has therefore provided a new and unfair set of challenges that have greater consequences for LDCs.

It’s these climate-vulnerable nations that are already experiencing the greatest impacts of climate change despite having done the least to cause it. And as the British Red Cross’ Mary Friel pointed out in last month’s IBT blog, they are also the countries that have the most experience and knowledge in how to respond.

Some efforts have been made to ease the problems. Technical support and training has been provided by the UNFCCC, and time zones rotated to ensure no particular region was disadvantaged. But technical problems, connectivity issues and power failures have persisted, causing many interruptions and delays.

The reality of negotiating from an internet café

These issues are not just limited to the availability, reliability or speed of connection to the internet, either. For example, there are huge disparities in the cost of data from country to country, even within the global South (the average cost of 1GB of mobile data in Malawi is $US27.41 compared to $8 in the US and $1.05 in Kenya), and the same is true of equipment: someone earning the average salary in Sierra Leone would have to save for six months before being able to afford a smartphone.

“The problem is that in some countries, internet is still an expensive luxury”, said Alpha Kaloga, a climate negotiator from Guinea.

Climate negotiators without the internet at home have reported that they can only join online meetings from other facilities, from offices to internet cafes. When meetings take place at night or run late, they are forced to leave the meeting to travel home safely before dusk.

And these problems assume the internet is even available. Governments, particularly in Africa and Asia, have increasingly shut down the internet to citizens, citing reasons ranging from a need to ensure national security and safety to trying to prevent students from cheating during exams. This is often done without warning: “Internet is not water, internet is not air,” said Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019.

So while negotiators from all countries have experienced issues at some point, it’s clear that delegates from the least resourced and most climate-vulnerable countries have been disproportionately affected.

Travel restrictions are likely to increase online focus

The additional inequalities posed by technological access to the negotiations is one of the reasons COP president Alok Sharma committed in May to an ‘in-person’ COP26. But with little let-up in the pandemic, plus unfulfilled vaccine promises and expensive and lengthy quarantines for delegates from some countries, pressure is mounting for delegates to be able to join negotiations virtually.

These issues affect anyone attending COP26, including journalists. For example, border closures in Tuvalu and Kiribati mean no one is able to travel, while anyone from Bangladesh, Laos or Cambodia faces 14 days of quarantine at their own expense on their return.

Alongside the digital divide, this means those communities on the frontline of the worst climate impacts are in danger of not having equal representation at the negotiations, fewer media to report back on what is decided on issues that matter to them, plus difficulty following the summit remotely themselves.

So despite the humorous coverage of negotiators struggling to prepare and take their place at the most important climate conference of the year, it really is no laughing matter.

Matt Wright is IIED’s web planning and content manager

Watch in full: Briefing on climate change with BBC News

Briefing Notes: BBC News on Climate Change

Speaker

Matt McGrath, BBC Environment Correspondent

matt.mcgrath@bbc.co.uk

Climate and Science team

Matt is part of the 20-25 strong Climate and Science team (it was previously Science and Environment). The new name signals the importance that the BBC attaches to climate change. The team is being relocated to Cardiff so there will be some departures. The main correspondents are David Shukman, Victoria Gill, Rebecca Morelle, Justin Rowlatt, Claire Marshall, Pallab Ghosh and Roger Harrabin. Each has their own area of interest which you can see from their previous reporting but there is some overlap. Roger covers UK and Matt global. Matt mainly produces digital content but also some radio and TV. He covers climate change, IPPC, COP, UN, global policy and impacts.

Climate change coverage

Matt said there is a big audience appetite for climate change related stories and interest is growing. When he wrote a story about the latest IPPC report it had 4m page views on the day. He says that their audience research shows that the audience likes mainstream coverage of the big climate stories. They like the fact that the BBC is objective and is a reliable source of information.

Changes to BBC News

A new commissioning system is currently being put in place to avoid duplication and to focus on fewer stories. It was felt that there were too many stories being produced and too much duplication. Commissioning groups will decide which stories to prioritise and the approach will be digital first. Each story will run on radio, TV and online, so for the stories that are commissioned will reach bigger audiences than in the past. There will be greater depth and analysis. The downside is that there will be a narrowing of the range of stories. Matt agreed that the big news story of the day will dominate, as it does now, but said there would be a greater effort to put in place explainers and increase the range of voices that are heard on a story.

Pitching

Matt was sympathetic about the challenges of pitching to BBC News. He said a lot is about building relationships. The first story you pitch will not necessarily get commissioned but a later one may. Target a correspondent that you think may be interested and start trying out ideas on them. He said most of the commissioning for the coverage of COP has been done but advised everyone to watch events and post comments or pictures that are relevant on a given day. He said there will be live coverage online throughout COP and this is a good opportunity to place topical stories especially on the first few days of COP when not much is newsworthy. The BBC is going to give COP a huge amount of coverage. Also think about pitching spokespeople, but be clear that they have something to say and are willing to be outspoken. This is a chance to talk about issues rather than a PR opportunity for an NGO. There is strong interest in data – if you are pitching data then the BBC will need access to the raw data and their in house team will make the charts.

Impact of climate change on developing countries

This is an aspect of the climate change story that the BBC wants to cover but Matt said that they had covered it already and needed to keep finding new angles. They are also keen to ensure that voices from these worst affected communities are heard during COP and Matt accepts that NGOs are closer to the communities and can help to give the BBC access.

Changing tone of coverage

The BBC’s approach to covering this issue had changed a lot since the previous COP when coverage had to be ‘balanced’ with sceptical voices included. BBC News now accepts that climate change is the result of human actions. Given the audience interest, the BBC is aware of its responsibility in covering the issue and wants to ensure that its coverage reaches mainstream audiences. They are often more interested in the practical aspects – such as replacing gas boilers – and Matt feels that future coverage will look more at these practical realities. He also says that want to give more time to food and the food system. There is great interest in positive stories and people want to see solutions and how they work on the ground. In future, correspondents like Matt will be travelling much less and stories will be covered by in country reporters. This has been happening already under Covid and will continue. Reporters will still go on trips – for example to undertake investigations – but they won’t go simply to be seen in a place or to record a piece to camera.

MG, 28.9.21

COP26 must support communities already dealing with climate change

We need COP26 and the media to deliver for people and communities who are already feeling the harsh impacts of climate change writes Mary Friel, COP26 policy and advocacy manager at British Red Cross.

This summer we’ve seen extreme weather events dominate the news, from unprecedented heatwaves in North America, to flash floods in London and Belgium to wildfires in Southern Europe. As world leaders prepare to meet at COP26 in November, to negotiate global action on climate change, the urgency for action is growing day by day.

We have worked extensively with national media outlets, particularly broadcasters, across these particular high-profile events, to provide first-hand insight into the humanitarian response and the needs of the most affected. The flooding in parts of Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands especially, saw a demand for speakers and commentary, with the explicit impacts of climate change clear to see, relatively close to home. [Watch Sky News interview with Red Cross spokesperson, Naomi Nolte, who provides an update from the ground in Velmo, The Netherlands.]

Emergency response volunteer Kenny provides hot drinks to members of the community as they help clean up the village of Fishlake, in Doncaster, following widespread floods in November 2019.

Many of the communities hardest hit don’t make the headlines

From families skipping meals and going hungry as droughts cause crops to fail, to families made homeless by floods because their houses have been destroyed, to people displaced by cyclones and hurricanes.

We need COP26 and the media to deliver for people and communities who are already feeling the harsh impacts of climate change.

Some media outlets are leading the way

There are certain media outlets who are leading the way by producing holistic climate storytelling. Sky are both telling and delivering information on climate in many different and innovative ways. Our media team worked with the Daily Climate Show team earlier this year with Red Cross Disaster Risk Reduction specialist, Yasif Hasan, taking part in a 30-minute Instagram live, from Bangladesh. A platform that allowed for an in-depth conversation on climate that couldn’t have been achieved in another broadcast format. The piece provided live commentary from one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate, delivered straight to thousands of viewers on their smartphones.

We know that the last decade has been the warmest on record, with climate change driving more extreme weather events. This is increasing global humanitarian need. In July, British Red Cross launched its Feeling the Heat report which looked at how prepared the UK public is for rising temperatures and how aware people are of the risks of heatwaves. What was encouraging was that we achieved in-depth coverage across a range of right and left-leaning media outlets including print, online, radio and TV, reaching our influencer and general public audience, with a focus on at risk groups. The climate conversation in the UK continues to build – it has to.

The Red Cross World Disasters Report is an urgent wake-up call

The Red Cross World Disasters Report shows that 1.7 billion people have already been affected by climate and weather-related disasters in the past decade. As the scientific community and UN call the latest evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report a “code red for humanity” there’s no time for delay.

The Red Cross is calling for the most climate-vulnerable people and communities to be at the heart of COP26 discussions and decisions. We are well positioned, as the Red Cross and Red Crescent is as local as it gets, with 165,000 local branches and with the support of 14 million volunteers.

The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, through the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre, is engaged all year round in UN processes which support the annual UN Climate Conference (COP). Through this work the Red Cross raises the needs of the most vulnerable communities already facing humanitarian impacts from climate change, and offers solutions and ways of good practice working with communities.

The Red Cross Movement also supports the Risk Informed Early Action Partnership (REAP), a global network convened by IFRC, which aims to make one billion people safer from disasters by 2025. (REAP) REAP is part of the COP26 Presidency Race to Resilience campaign and is helping to build momentum for COP26.

Mongolian Red Cross distributing much needed relief ahead of the coming dzud. Forecasts of one of the most extreme winters on record in Mongolia triggered the release of pre-emptive emergency funds in a bid to protect the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable herders.

We need urgent action to prioritise those communities that are likely to be worst hit

The Red Cross is calling for global leaders to take action – and for the UK Government to continue to use its diplomatic influence – to put communities already dealing with climate change at the heart of COP26. We want to see the scaling up of global climate finance for adaptation, increased access to climate finance for locally-led work and a commitment to invest in more adaptation, preparedness, early warning and early action to prevent future extreme weather events from becoming disasters.

Red Cross teams are on the ground right now, working side by side with communities, listening and responding to people’s needs. From communities to governments, media to the private sector, we all have an important role in tackling the impacts of climate change. We will continue to share our calls for action, our spokespeople and our local knowledge with the media and government in the lead-up to, and during, COP26 to better support communities to be able to prepare for, respond to and recover from climate related emergencies.

Mary Friel is British Red Cross’ COP26 policy and advocacy manager.

Briefing Notes: Podcast peer learning session

IBT hosted an informal peer learning session on podcasting. Members were invited to share their experiences of working on a podcast. 

Internal buy-in and sign offs

• Getting the organisation’s CEO to support (and sometimes host!) the podcast was suggested as a good strategy to secure buy-in for a podcast.
• One member also pointed out that an important selling point for podcasts is that they work well over a long period of time compared to blogs or media spotlights and are therefore good value for money for the organisation. 
• Several members found that linking the podcast to a particular campaign or initiative was important in securing buy-in. 
• Once podcast production begins some members found there were internal obstacles to getting content signed off, which can be a ‘frustrating and slow’ process, especially if not everyone agrees that the content meets the organisation’s values or content guidelines. One member said they’ve found sharing transcripts can be a good way of getting more contentious parts of an episode signed off because stakeholders focus more on the words being used, rather than how it sounds as an audio clip.
• The point was also made by one participant that producing more edgy content that engages an audience was more challenging than getting internal buy-in

Paying guests and contributors 

• The issue of whether guests and contributors should be paid for their time was raised. For some members not paying guests, particularly those in the global south who may benefit only indirectly from appearing on the podcast, felt uncomfortable.
• It was pointed out that paying guests may result in them saying what they think the NGO or host wants to hear, rather than speaking honestly.
• The general consensus amongst members was that guests would not be paid for appearing on their podcasts.

Promoting podcasts

• YouTube was widely regarded as a useful place to share podcasts and was described as an ‘easy way to get an untapped audience’. YouTube is also a good place to upload transcriptions of each episode.
• Organisational newsletters are a useful outlet for promoting a podcast.
• One member’s podcast has its own Twitter account which is most helpful for engaging their existing audience, rather than attracting new listeners.
• Another member deployed a range of methods for promoting their podcast including visual trailers on YouTube and celebrity social media takeovers.
• One member tested different social media platforms and found LinkedIn to be far more effective than Twitter for finding new listeners. 
• Several members continue promoting an episode until the next one is released and also look for news hooks to promote related episodes of their podcasts, even if they were released several months ago.
• Broccoli Content, the podcast production company, was recommended as a great reference for social media assets to accompany a podcast series. 
• Headliner can be used to create five free audiograms per month, which are useful for promoting podcasts on social media.

Measuring success

• Members found that measuring success and ascertaining who is listening to their podcast can be quite difficult.
• Measuring listener numbers is one way of measuring success but it’s important to remember that although podcast listener numbers are often a lot smaller than audiences on other mediums, podcast audiences are often more engaged and will listen to the entire episode. 

KT 03.8.21

How the International Rescue Committee found success on Instagram

Audiences are increasingly turning to Instagram as a source of news and information, offering INGOs an excellent opportunity to use the platform as a space to share their expertise. 

The International Rescue Committee has found an effective strategy to make the most out of Instagram. As a result, their number of followers increased by 92% in one year (June 2020 – June 2021). During the Euros, their post celebrating the diversity of the England team went viral and last year their posts explaining the Yemen humanitarian crisis were shared thousands of times. 

Poppy Bullen, Senior Digital Communications Officer at IRC, shares her top tips for INGOs hoping to up their game on Instagram.

Be a source of reliable information

There was a really pivotal shift in Instagram last year. It has become a platform where people go to share and get their information. But I don’t think INGOs are necessarily making as much use of it as they could. In our world of information overload, I think people will be looking to organisations like ours to get reliable information, so it’s important that we’re putting it out there.

Swipable infographics are a great example. Last year, there was a lot of social conversation about the crisis in Yemen, so when we saw that trending we thought this is definitely something we should be sharing as well! It was around the time of our World Refugee Week campaign, but even though we had so much else going on we made the decision to be reactive and create a Yemen infographic. So many people shared it and added it to their stories. Since then we’ve been using that style of information graphic for subjects that we feel we’ve got the expertise on which has continued to work well.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by International Rescue Committee (@rescue_uk)

Get creative and find positive stories

With Instagram, for the majority of your content the tone still needs to be positive. It’s important for the audience and supporters to see stories and content they enjoy reading and sharing, whilst also seeing the IRC’s impact. So sometimes it’s about finding the creative flare for things.

Our Fish n Chips campaign did really well. We had a film with Gary Lineker talking to an animated fish voiced by Jo Brand, and she’s telling him about the history of fish and chips, and how it was brought to the UK by a refugee. That was a really fun piece of work, and allowed us to do other interactive things on Instagram like quizzes about refugee inventions. Being able to find that kind of quirky content is great. That campaign did really well – obviously partly because of Lineker’s huge following on Instagram!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by International Rescue Committee (@rescue_uk)

Keep on top of trends and be reactive

One of the main things we focus on is keeping on top of trends. Keep an eye on relevant accounts and hashtags, and look at what’s happening in the news. It’s so important to be able to react to what’s happening in the world on Instagram. Previously, we might have just reacted on Twitter, but it’s actually really beneficial if we can get our teams to quickly put a graphic together, or have strong images on hand to be able to talk on a relevant subject. That sort of content does really well. 

For example, we saw great success with our ‘it’s coming home’ graphic which celebrated the England football team’s diversity. We shared it just before England played in the semi-final and the post went viral. In the same week visits to our landing page through direct or Google search increased by 130% compared to the previous week.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by International Rescue Committee (@rescue_uk)

Use a mixture of content

Another key part of our strategy is using a mixture of content, from engaging case studies to shareable infographics and reactive posts. And it’s important not to underestimate the importance of Instagram Stories. They are quite time consuming, so can be easily overlooked, but even just sharing the most recent post onto your Stories can really increase engagement. We find takeovers perform really well on Stories too. For example, we’ll have staff members talking about a situation from the field which allows people to feel a bit closer to the situation.

We’ve also experimented with Instagram Lives, and they seem to work particularly well with celebrities. We had the actress Siobhan McSweeny from Derry Girls talk to a women’s protection staff member in South Sudan and that was really successful.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by International Rescue Committee (@rescue_uk)

Poppy Bullen is IRC’s Senior Digital Communications Officer.

Watch in full: Podcast masterclass with Today in Focus

‘Keep things simple’

The Guardian’s award-winning podcast, Today in Focus, was launched almost three years ago and it has been widely praised, winning best current affairs podcast at the British Podcast Awards. Rachel Humphreys, one of the presenters and producers, recently gave IBT members a masterclass. Mark Galloway reports.

Rachel’s parting words to us were ‘keep things simple’ and I do see what she means. There are so many podcasts that throw lots of information at you and they are just not that enjoyable to listen to. The Guardian’s Today in Focus has a winning formula so it was a real pleasure to hear from Rachel about the key elements behind its success. Many of our members produce their own podcasts and I’m sure there are lessons that we can all learn from Rachel.

Storytelling

One the key strengths of Today in Focus is its storytelling. It feels more like a documentary than current affairs. The podcast opens with a question that the presenter seeks to answer. She leads us on a journey. Her questions are simple and straightforward. She does not ask ‘clever’ questions to impress the audience. The presenter brings something personal and, even if she has prepared the questions in advance, it should not feel scripted. If she is shocked by an answer she shows it. The producers cleverly break up the narrative into several parts. They hook you at the beginning and then start to peel back the layers of a story.

Tone of voice

Rachel told us how it has taken the team some time to develop the right tone of voice. She tells her journalistic colleagues that the style should be conversational – very different from writing a story for the newspaper. And there is more time and space. A newspaper story might be 1,000 words. A 30 minute podcast would equate to 5,000 words. There is time for context, background, history and character development – even for humour. The tone is informal and easy to listen to. The presenter is like a friend guiding the audience through a story.

Strong characters

Strong characters are key to the best journalism and Today in Focus is no exception. Some episodes feature Guardian journalists who are eyewitnesses to a story. They are great storytellers. Others feature experts. But the most memorable ones feature first person testimony from someone who has direct experience of the issue being investigated. One of the most memorable recent episodes featured the story of Karim Ennarah, a human rights activist who was arrested and imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities. His British wife, Jess Kelly, told her side of the story.

International stories

One of the strengths of Today in Focus is its international coverage. International news nowadays is usually told in the form of short reports and there is rarely time for depth or context. The Guardian has an excellent team of international reporters who don’t get space in the newspaper but do get space on Today in Focus. There have been many memorable international reports from the team. One of the most stark was from Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, who reported from one of Rio’s biggest favelas, the day after police carried out a deadly raid in which 27 favela residents were shot dead. One police officer was killed too. Many of the international stories featured on the podcast have not broken through to the mainstream news agenda. It was encouraging to hear from Rachel that there will be more international stories going forward.

Keep an open mind

Rachel and her colleagues always keep an open mind. They have no preconceived idea of what a story looks like and therefore they are open to being pitched ideas from NGOs and others. One of their recent episodes looked at families who were searching for missing relatives, a trend that has increased as a result of Covid. They came across this story when it was pitched to them by a charity working in this area.

The presenter

Choosing the right presenter is key. A presenter should be calm under pressure, show empathy, be able to listen and have a conversation rather than just run through a list of predetermined questions, remember to ask the obvious questions and maintain a sense of humour. The presenter should be in the background, allowing the story and the protagonists to take centre stage. She should follow her instincts – the audience tends to be interested in what you are interested in.

Today in Focus has a new presenting team. Anushka Asthana, who launched the podcast, has just left and Mike Safi and Nosheen Iqbal have been hired to join Rachel. We wish them well!

Mark Galloway is IBT’s Director.

Briefing Notes: Podcast masterclass with Today in Focus

Speaker

Rachel Humphreys, co-presenter and producer Rachel.humphreys@guardian.com

Overview

The Guardian set up its Today in Focus podcast in the summer of 2018 and it launched in November of that year. There’s quite a big team – around 10 full time staff plus freelancers – made up of presenters, producers, exec producers and sound designers. Rachel presents and produces (which involves planning the episode, briefing the presenter and editing).

The aim of the podcast was to tell the stories behind the headlines, develop the Guardian’s journalists as characters and find a new audience beyond those who read the newspaper or follow the Guardian online. Rachel came from daily news so she is able to turn stories around quickly when necessary, but she enjoys spending more time getting the story right. The lead presenter at the start was Anushka who recently left. There will now be a trio of presenters – Rachel, Mike Safi and Nosheen Iqbal.

They were named best current affairs podcast in last year’s British Podcast Awards. They are different from most current affairs podcast as they only do one story per episode and they do not slavishly follow the news agenda.

Today in Focus runs daily from Monday to Friday – each episode is roughly 30 minutes long and follows one story. The interviewees are mostly Guardian journalists but other experts sometimes feature and when it’s a human interest story there will be first person testimony from someone who has first-hand experience of the issue.

They try and vary the mix each week, a mixture of lighter and more serious, a running daily news story, a human interest story, a big global story, something lighter.

International stories

They have run quite a few international stories. In the last couple of months, they have reported from Brazil, Syria, Gaza, Hong Kong, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Canada, China and the US. They have covered Covid, British politics, climate change, missing people, human rights, UFOs. The range is broad. They are quite open minded about the stories they cover. One of the new presenters, Mike, is based in Beirut so there will be more foreign stories going forward.

Pitching

Rachel and her colleagues keep an open mind and they are happy to receive pitches. Pitch to Rachel by email, either a story you think they should report on or a human interest issue with a named character they can interview at length. The stories need to have several elements to sustain 30 minutes. One of their recent episodes about families tracing missing relatives was the result of a pitch by a charity to Anushka. Rachel will read all the pitches she receives. It is also helpful if you can send her some audio that you have recorded yourself (it can be recorded on a smartphone).

Human interest stories

Rachel spoke about a podcast on human rights in Egypt which told the story of an Egyptian who was detained by the authorities and later released. The podcast also featured his British wife. Casting is key and they work hard to make sure that the human interest stories have strong characters at their heart. They also have a duty of care and will play clips to the contributors to let them know what to expect. It’s good to interview people who have never been interviewed before – they did one episode on gay conversion therapy and featured a woman talking for the first time about her experience of it.

Prepping guests

There is no set approach. Sometimes they will send questions in advance or do a research interview. On other occasions, it is more effective to be spontaneous. It depends on the guest and what works best for that person. Answers should not feel rehearsed or scripted.

Tone of voice

One of the key reasons for their success is getting the right tone of voice and this has evolved over time. The tone is conversational and informal. The presenter is a like a friend guiding the audience through a story. They bring something personal to it and even if they have prepared the questions in advance it should not feel scripted. They want to explain complex stories but not to patronise their audience and tell them things they already know. Working out how much to give as background to a story is one of the most challenging aspects.

Editing

Rachel showed us how she edits with different contributors on different tracks. She will do the first edit then show it to the presenter and exec producer and make more changes. Everyone will listen to it several times before it is signed off and goes to the sound designer to complete. A lot of time and effort goes into editing although on the big running news stories the time is condensed. They will do an interview in the morning, edit it and hand it to the sound designer in the afternoon and s/he may work on it all evening. It goes live around 2 or 3am.

The presenter

Choosing the right presenter is key. Rachel feels that the skills needed are to be calm under pressure, to have the ability to empathise, to be able to listen and have a conversation rather than just run through a list of predetermined questions, to remember to ask the obvious questions, a sense of humour, and a voice that is easy to listen to. Presenters should be in the background allowing the story and the protagonists to take centre stage, they should not ask ‘clever’ questions to show off. Follow your instincts – the audience tends to be interested in what you are interested in.

Narrative

A podcast is like a documentary, there is a narrative journey, a beginning, a middle and an end. Today in Focus breaks a story up into chapters to provide punctuation. They also start with a question which provides the focus for the narrative. The intro at the top is important – put your strongest sound first to get the audience hooked but don’t tell the whole story in the intro. Remember the thing that got you interested in the story in the first place.

Conclusion

Rachel gave us some concluding thoughts. Teamwork is crucial. Tell stories that you’re interested in. Keep an open mind. Keep things simple. Audio is so clever that there is always a way of telling a story.

MG

20.7.21

Top tips for NGO podcasters

This month we are taking a closer look at podcasts. Many of our members have launched their own. They talk about the lessons they have learnt to Katie Tiffin, IBT’s communications and membership officer #welovepodcasts

Podcasts are special – they have a real impact on their audience compared with every other type of media.  More than half of listeners say they talk to friends and family about what they have heard or research more about the podcast’s topic. Not surprisingly, many NGOs have launched their own podcasts, but there’s a real challenge –  to make your podcast stand out from a very crowded market. 

1. Choose your guests carefully 

Guests are the essence of your podcast so choosing the right contributors is crucial. Podcasts thrive on storytelling so look for someone who has a gift for explaining, not someone who has lots of facts at their fingertips.

Think about diversity. Kate Green, who produces IIED’s Make Change Happen podcast, says they had initially planned to showcase the organisation’s researchers but realised that it was important to hear from marginalised voices and to have a panel that was balanced in terms of race and gender. 

Be flexible with your guests. María Faciolince who presents Oxfam’s Power in the Pandemic podcast says that you need to be able to change your approach to meet the needs of guests from different backgrounds. One of her guests, a Rohingya refugee, did not have enough internet bandwidth to record the podcast so they had to use WhatsApp voice notes instead.

Finding guests who connect with your target audience is important. Greg Armfield from WWF wanted to use the Call of the Wild podcast to connect with a younger audience so they decided to include guests not typically associated with environmental issues. 

2. Prepare your guests so they know what to expect

Some producers meet their guests first whilst others opt for a more spontaneous conversation. 

Kate prefers to have a meeting to check everyone’s tech is working, chat about the podcast’s format and the topics it will cover and ensure that guests feel comfortable and confident. 

Katerina Bezgachina, from Habitat for Humanity, says that when they did the first series of their Home Sapiens podcast they sent guests a list of questions in advance. This sometimes led to jargon-heavy answers so now they plan to take a more relaxed approach, just letting guests know the topic but no list of questions.

3. Be creative about how you connect with your target audience

Understanding who you’re trying to reach with your podcast and researching your target audience is of course essential. Greg from WWF found out that the fastest growing podcast audience in the UK is people aged 16 – 24. WWF tends to engage with a slightly older demographic so they decided to use their Call of the Wild podcast to connect with this younger audience. 

Similarly, Oxfam’s Power in the Pandemic team thought their podcast would resonate with a younger audience. María Faciolince recognised that a lot of this potential audience would be on Instagram so she created an account linked to the podcast to draw in listeners from outside their network.

4. Don’t forget sound quality

With many podcasts being made by organisations with professional recording equipment podcast listeners now expect high quality sound.

Abigail Watson, who co-presents Saferworld’s Warpod, says their podcast initially lost a lot of listeners due to poor sound quality, so they invested in new headphones, a microphone and switched to recording in a room with less echo. These changes have made a big difference to the listening experience. 

5. Keep measuring your audience impact 

Unlike other forms of media, audience size alone isn’t always the best indicator of success as podcasts tend to attract smaller but more dedicated audiences. 

Abigail says they try to ‘keep tabs on who is listening and how much they are enjoying or learning from it’. Anchor, the platform used to upload their podcast, is helpful for statistics such as audience age and where they are based.

Analysing audience data is not the only way to measure your podcast’s success. Abigail says the Warpod team reach out to people via email to find out if they are listening and what they think of the podcast. Katerina from Habitat for Humanity says that when new episodes were released they noticed that they gained new social media followers which indicated that the podcast was achieving their aim of connecting with an audience outside their usual network.

6. Experiment with different ways of marketing 

There are more than 2 million podcasts available on the Apple Index so effective marketing  is important so that listeners can find your podcast. 

Kate says they created a Twitter account for IIED’s Make Change Happen podcast so their listeners had a separate space to access information on the podcast without it getting lost in IIED’s organisational accounts.

María from Oxfam says the Instagram account they created for the podcast is useful for sharing multimedia content related to it, but it’s not essential and can lead to a lot of extra work. 

Promoting your podcast doesn’t have to revolve around social media. IIED’s podcast was promoted in the organisation’s newsletters and specially-created email footers, which they noticed did generate extra traffic. 

7. Make your podcast accessible to a range of audiences

Podcasts present obvious accessibility issues which can limit their reach particularly for deaf audiences. Providing a transcript of each episode is an important first step. Kate from IIED says they upload each podcast episode to YouTube with a full transcript in the description. To improve accessibility each episode of Oxfam’s Power in the Pandemic podcast is also turned into a blog which covers the highlights. 

Looking for more advice on starting a podcast? IBT members can access our report Podcasts: Where next? which covers insights into the podcast landscape and creating a podcast from podcasting experts and our members. 

Watch in full: Sarah Whitehead at Sky News

Briefing Notes: Sky News on climate change

Speaker

Sarah Whitehead, deputy head of newsgathering sarah.whitehead@sky.uk

Climate change unit

Michael Blair news editor

Rhiannon Williams producer

Hannah Thomas-Peter reporter

Victoria Seabrook digital reporter

Emails all first name dot surname at sky.uk

Sky News has had a longstanding interest in climate change and environmental stories. Sarah mentioned ocean rescue campaign and the new climate series of monthly films. They are now increasing their commitment to climate change in the run up to COP. They are aware that the audience is often depressed by the news about climate change and scared so they have a big emphasis on charting the changes that are taking place and showing the solutions. They want to empower audiences and hold governments and business to account. It is not just up to people to change their behaviour, government and industry have a big role to play too. They want their coverage to reach a mainstream audience, both those who are already interested in climate change and those who may become more interested.

The Daily Climate Show – Now they do the Daily Climate Show, a 12-15 daily show which features the day’s news stories and climate change diaries of people who are making a difference. The aim of the show is to be very topical and newsy, they don’t run long features, there are a lot of stories covered (8 or 9 stories in each show). Its regular presenter is Anna Jones. They are also looking for studio guests for the show. The show features lots of data as Sarah says there is big audience interest in data. There is a daily tally of UK fuel consumption showing the proportion that comes from renewables. Ed Conway the business correspondent has now taken on a role as business/data correspondent.

ClimateCast – they also do a weekly podcast. This is very accessible. Recent editions have included an interview with a leading climate change expert and with social influencers who are championing the issue. The podcast includes a run down of the week’s stories. It is presented by Anna too.

Bangladesh – they currently have a team in Bangladesh and will continue to report from the country in the run up to COP, subject to visas. They wanted to be somewhere where you can see the impacts of climate change at first hand. Michael Blair is there. The correspondent is Katerina Vittozi.

Pitching – they are looking for news so give them a new report, new research, new data, something that they can push and will make their headlines. Send photos, video, sound clip. Pitch stories and interviewees and email one of the team not all of them. They are also interested in UK stories. For more information on pitching to Sky News, see notes from the briefing with Tim Singleton, Head of International News, which took place in October 2020.

Instagram – they do an Instagram live every Wednesday at 5 which Katerina hosts. It’s a different guest each week.

MG, 22.6.21

The Climate Emergency Toolkit that is changing people’s lives

Tearfund has long campaigned on the issue of climate change. Earlier this year, it launched a toolkit to spell out to churches three simple steps that they can take to help tackle the climate emergency. Jack Wakefield explains how the toolkit came about.

In 2019 two church-goers in Leeds, Mark and Howard, met for a coffee at a Christian event and discussed how little mention there was of the climate emergency. ‘There is such a deafening silence on climate change’ remarked Howard, ‘you would think there was no emergency at all’.

That initial reflection sparked a conversation that eventually formed into a proposal: a toolkit to help churches and Christian organisations respond to the climate crisis like the emergency it is. We’ve now seen churches declaring a climate emergency, making plans to divest or take other actions, and supporting their congregations to respond – including many who haven’t engaged with the topic before.

When they make their declarations, we’re encouraging churches to create a public moment so that they can successfully engage local media. Our hope is that if hundreds of churches declare a climate emergency in the run up to COP, this will become a story in itself.

One pastor told us he hadn’t ever preached about climate change before 2020. But after a few sermons and making their official ‘recognition’, they ended up with a team of 23 people volunteering to help coordinate the response and run initiatives in the wider community.

Let’s think of churches as communities of people with real influence

Six months after that first conversation between Mark and Howard, they presented the idea to my team at the Tearfund offices, as well as people from several other organisations, in the hope that we’d support the project. As they pitched to us, one brilliant idea stood out: what if we stopped thinking about the church only as a building to be improved, but also as a community of people from all walks of life, attending schools, workplaces, community groups and with huge potential to influence those spaces.

Responding to the climate emergency should be central to our Christian faith

So often in the church, climate change can be a specialist interest for a select few who faithfully chip away at change, getting burned out and feeling that no one else cares. Yet responding to the climate emergency should be central to the Christian faith: it is about loving our global neighbours who are threatened by droughts and storms, as well as an opportunity to reach out and serve our local communities.

The question their presentation posed to us was this: what if we could move climate change to a front-and-centre issue that concerned every single member of the congregation? In the coming months, a small team of us from Tearfund and the Church of England, accompanied by Mark and Howard, got to work.

With so many brilliant Christian organisations already working in this space, we were conscious of not reinventing the wheel. Through consultation with more than ten other organisations we eventually formed a Toolkit: a hub full of resources and tools, many of which already existed, re-organised around three simple steps that would provide a clear and simple journey for a church or Christian organisation (or perhaps any community organisation) to respond with both the scale and urgency required.

Three simple steps that every church can take

First, ‘Prepare’: begin the conversation with the whole congregation. Preach about climate change, host listening circles for those with climate anxiety, run workshops about sustainable living and help everyone see this is an important part of being a Christian today.

Next, ‘Declare’: make an official and public statement that says you recognise the scale of the crisis and commit to making a plan for the church’s emissions in a certain timeframe. Decisions in churches can take many years, but making the declaration gives a deadline, while also providing a reason for churches to contact their local council, MP, as well as other churches to inform them that they have declared an emergency and to push for change politically too.

The third and final step is ‘Impact’: support everyone in the congregation to reflect on where they already have influence – their workplaces, community groups, families, schools and more – and take action. Whether it’s asking their employer where their pensions are invested or asking their school to switch to renewable energy.

The toolkit is changing people’s lives

I recently met with someone whose church has been looking at the Climate Emergency Toolkit and teaching about climate change on Sundays. She’s a vet and has begun plans to open her own – sustainable – practice, finding ways to source sterile medical equipment without single-use plastic, using renewable energy and so on. She was excited as she shared because this wasn’t about using the correct compostable cups at church, it was about her passion as a vet.

The Impact step also encourages churches to connect with their local climate groups, whether it’s a conservation society, Transition Towns or XR group. These can be passionate and informed people keen to make change, but without huge numbers locally. We wanted to encourage churches to stand alongside them for some of their campaigns and amplify their voices by speaking together as, perhaps unlikely, coalitions. If we’re going to see change at the speed we need, we’ll need to come together.

In the first few months since launching, more than two thousand people have downloaded the Climate Emergency Toolkit. At a ‘national training webinar’ we hosted a few weeks ago, more than 400 people attended, keen to learn how to apply it to their own context. We’ve seen twenty declarations made, and we’re hopeful that there are many more to come – but more importantly, we’re hopeful that churches in the UK will be communities full of people excited to love their global neighbours by influencing their politicians, workplaces and communities to respond to the climate crisis like the emergency it really is.

• The Climate Emergency Toolkit has been produced by a broad coalition of organisations and in collaboration with activists and church leaders. It has been endorsed by a number of Christian climate scientists. The Toolkit can be found at: climateemergencytoolkit.com

Jack Wakefield is a campaigner at Tearfund.

Watch in full: Dan Stewart at Time

Briefing Notes: Time

Speaker

Dan Stewart, International Editor dan.stewart@time.com

Key contacts

Justin Worland, climate change policy Justin.worland@time.com

Aryn Baker, climate change human impacts Aryn.baker@time.com

Ciara Nugent, will lead on COP Ciara.nugent@time.com

Alejandro de la Garza, covers innovation alejandro.delagarza@time.com

Elijah Wolfson, covers science and health (based in New York) elijah.wolfson@time.com

Alice Park, covers health and medicine alice.park@time.com

Overview

Dan is the international editor, based and London, and leads on all international coverage, although he is regularly in touch with New York and takes decisions jointly with them.

He spoke about some of the many changes that have been taking place at Time. It was best known as a weekly news magazine but now it is reinventing itself as a global media organisation. The magazine is now fortnightly and distributed in 45 countries although its biggest audience is in the US. But the magazine represents only a small part of the content that is produced. Time have a big online presence with articles, photos, videos and a podcast coming. 90% of their journalism is online only with 10% going in the magazine.

The current owners are Mark and Lynne Benioff from Salesforce and they are investing in the brand, not looking to make money. There is a big push on experimenting and innovation to reach new audiences. They currently have 2m subscribers and the goal is to reach 10m by 2030. One on five subscribers are outside the US.

The online audience is also mainly in the US and they are read by policy makers in Washington and New York. But there is a growing global audience in Europe, Africa and Asia. They employ 120 journalists worldwide with correspondents and stringers.

They are not trying to be a breaking news site. If they report on a breaking news story then they will try and find their own angle so that they have something new to say. They are interested in finding stories that have a wider impact and shed light on global trends. They are quite choosy about the stories they cover.

International coverage

Their international coverage is crucial and Dan says that they ‘cover the world with an American accent.’ He explained that they are trying to make connections, explain events and the impact they have. He cited their coverage of Myanmar and Covid in India as being successful and popular with their audience.

Climate change

They have had a big push on coverage of climate change with a special issue of the magazine last month and another one coming in the run up to COP26. They are currently planning their COP coverage but one of the issues they are focusing on is the role of the global south. Will leaders from the global south be able to attend COP? Will their perspective be heard? The theme of their coverage is ‘climate is everything.’ They want to show audiences that it affects every aspect of our lives – for example food and diet, educations, archtecture. They want to find stories that make these connections and are surprising or unexpected. One recent climate change story focused on the Rift Valley in Kenya and the way in which lakes are merging, displacing communities and creating climate refugees.

In addition to their online coverage they have a weekly climate change newsletter which reaches an influential audience. The aim of their climate change coverage is principally to reach a mainstream audience. They will be watching COP26 closely. Dan gave us the names and contact details of the climate change team (see key contacts above):

Justin Worland, based in Washington DC covers policy

Aryn Baker, based in Rome, covers the human impacts

Ciara Nugent , based in London, will lead on COP

Alejandro de la Garza, based in New York, covers innovation

With their climate change coverage they have also tried to give young people a platform. They chose Greta as their person of the year and have a strong relationship with her.

2030 Project

In January, they launched their 2030 Project with the aim of looking at solutions to some of the world’s key issues such as sustainability, innovation, etc and examining the ways in which the world is changing or needs to change. They have a partnership with the World Economic Forum which has called for a ‘great reset.’ Dan referenced the challenge of meeting the SDGs by 2030. They have created a microsite for this https://time.com/time2030/

Pitching

Pitches should be targeted at Time, you should show some knowledge and understanding of what works for them. They should be short and to the point. Think about why this would work for Time and offer exclusivity if at all possible. Pitch as long in advance as you can, especially if you are publishing a report. Pitches can go direct to Dan or to one of his colleagues. He receives hundreds of emails so cannot promise to answer every single one. It’s very unlikely that they will take photos or slideshows or video as they have a big team doing with this. However, if you have a photo that captures something important taking place that may work for them – Dan will pass it on to the photo team.

MG, 25.5.21

How the People’s Vaccine campaign challenged the dominant media narrative

It’s a year since the launch of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, which is campaigning for pharmaceutical companies working on COVID vaccines to share their knowledge free from patents in order to produce enough vaccines for the whole world. As Sarah Dransfield writes, media coverage has been a crucial part of the campaign.

When the campaign for a People’s Vaccine was launched, it was with the support of more than 140 past and present world leaders, economists and experts. It came about because of concerns from organisations working on HIV/AIDS that what happened with HIV/AIDS medicines – when countless lives were lost because antiretroviral medicines were unaffordable for people in poor countries –  would happen again with COVID vaccines.

Inevitably, the media remained primarily focused on the domestic vaccine rollout.  Instead of fighting this, we attempted to use it as a springboard. In December, on the day the first COVID vaccine was given to a British grandmother, we put out a People’s Vaccine story highlighting the fact that 9 out of 10 people in developing countries were likely to miss out on vaccines, whilst a handful of wealthy nations had enough to vaccinate their citizens several times over. This was a breakthrough for our campaign and got hundreds of media hits across the globe. More importantly, people started to talk more about the growing inequality of which countries were getting vaccine doses and which weren’t.

But building momentum for changes to what to many people are technical trade rules remained a challenge. When the Pfizer vaccine became the first to get approval for use, the media were broadcasting stories that focused on the problems posed by the need for cold-chain refrigeration. Yet we knew that the biggest barrier to people in developing nations getting vaccines wasn’t the fact they didn’t have enough fridges.

Most developing countries could not afford to pay for the vaccine

There was no mention of the fact that Pfizer had already sold the majority of doses to a handful of rich countries or the fact that at $40 a dose it was pretty much out of reach for most developing nations. This really compelled us to try to change the narrative, to raise awareness of the real barrier – the lack of available and affordable vaccines, the root cause of which was intellectual property rights held by the pharmaceutical companies and rich countries’ insistence on protecting them.

Perhaps understandably, much of the public discussion of how to plug the gap in the supply of vaccines to developing countries focused on the COVAX scheme, backed by the Gates Foundation among others, through which governments, including the UK and some of the vaccine producers – notably AstraZeneca – donate doses. While supportive of COVAX, we don’t believe it will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem and that rather than fighting for a larger share of a pie that is too small to go around, we should be increasing its size.

Public and scientific support for the People’s Vaccine campaign

We continued to warn that vaccines were being artificially rationed and did polling, which found that three quarters of the British public thought the Government should prevent pharmaceutical companies from having monopolies on COVID vaccines. We reached out to epidemiologists from some of the world’s leading academic institutions to get a stronger scientific argument for a People’s Vaccine. Two-thirds of those we spoke to thought we had a year or less before COVID-19 mutates to the extent that the majority of first-generation vaccines are rendered ineffective or that we’d need new or modified vaccines to deal with them. It gave our message that ‘we aren’t safe until we are all safe’ real clout.

It was when we saw an increase in media coverage from the pharmaceutical industry and its supporters against the sharing of Intellectual Property that we knew we were having a real impact. Proposals tabled by India and South Africa at the WTO, to waive intellectual property rights had garnered the support of more than 100 nations, although they continued to be blocked by rich countries, including the UK and US as well as the EU.

Support for the campaign was not growing fast enough

But, while we were making progress, it had not been fast enough. Our worst fears were realised as a new COVID wave started to devastate India. A situation made even more cruel by the fact that India, a country known as the pharmacy of the world, has been blocked from making more COVID-19 vaccines that could have prevented the horrific and spiralling loss of life.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance again called on its notable supporters, resulting in more than 170 former world leaders and Nobel laureates making a call for US President Joe Biden to make COVID-19 vaccines more readily available by waiving intellectual property rules. The pharmaceutical industry also ramped up their lobbing on the President in the media.

Finally, we had the amazing news that the US would support the waiver, which was a pivotal moment in the campaign. However, with the UK and others continuing to block the proposal, we still have a fight on our hands. We will continue to use the media to call for a People’s Vaccine, so that people in developing countries are able to get the same protection from the virus that we are lucky to be starting to see here in the UK.

Sarah Dransfield is a Senior Press Officer at Oxfam and media lead for the Alliance.

The challenge of media coverage in a time of Covid

More than a year into Covid, IBT recently hosted a panel discussion to consider how well the media has covered international stories and issues in this challenging period. IBT Director Mark Galloway reports.

We brought together a range of voices to look more closely at international coverage in the time of Covid. How well has mainstream media served us? Could it have done better? If so, how? There was an acknowledgement by the panel that the media had faced a unique challenge – the biggest story in living memory and yet the normal means of covering the story were simply not available.

Liliane Landor, Head of Foreign News at Channel 4 News, spoke candidly about the challenge, which was especially acute when the UK went into lockdown. The priority for the Channel 4 team was simply to ‘keep the show on the road’ she told us. For Liliane herself, it was ‘how to cover the world when it had become completely inaccessible.’ Channel 4 News has a small team of reporters who are mostly based in the UK. They couldn’t travel at all, so new ways had to be found to tell stories from around the world.

Liliane acknowledged that the necessity of having to rely on reporters, producers and camera crews who were in country was ultimately a huge benefit. It has changed Channel 4 News forever. She now has teams in Italy, France, India, Brazil, China and elsewhere, that she will use again in the future. They will become ‘part of the Channel 4 News family.’

The pandemic was one story which affected us all

For Liliane, the global story was so important that lines between domestic and foreign news ceased to exist. The pandemic was one story which affected us all. This was not a view shared by others on the panel, who felt that it was almost as if there were two pandemics being reported – the one happening in the UK and the one happening abroad.

Romilly Greenhill, UK Director of ONE, felt that in this regard the media had not served us well and, as a result, there was a lack of understanding amongst the UK public that how the pandemic was tackled in other countries would impact on us too. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

Romilly also felt that the media had failed to catch the mood of the public in its reporting of the vaccine rollout. Polling conducted by ONE and other organisations had found public support for the UK moving more quickly to share vaccine doses, especially with health workers in poorer countries. There was huge anger about the inequity of the vaccine rollout amongst leaders from the global south. This had not been reflected in UK media coverage.

Learning the lessons from how epidemics have been tackled in other parts of the world

There was a consensus amongst the panel that politicians in the UK had failed to learn from how other parts of the world had tackled previous epidemics such as Ebola and SARS. The media was partly to blame according to Indi Samarajiva, a Sri Lankan based journalist. Indi described this as a ‘colonial’ mentality that Britain knows best. He argued that the media was complicit in this view, a claim strongly contested by Liliane.

Camilla Knox-Peebles, CEO of Amref Health Africa UK and others on the panel wanted to hear a wider range of voices from the global south. She felt that the media had conflated the experience of African nations into one story as if Africa were just one country. The experience of living with Covid in Tanzania, where the President resisted a lockdown at all costs, was very different from the experience of living with it in a country like Botswana, which took swift action to close its borders and impose a lockdown. Camilla also felt that the media focus was on the medical story, the number of cases and how well health systems were coping. This neglected other equally important aspects of the crisis – the real impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. It was striking, Camilla said, how few positive stories there were from Africa in general.

There was a general feeling amongst the panel that if media coverage of international stories had more follow through and follow up, there would be a better understanding of what was happening in those countries. There would also be a better understanding of the pandemic and how its impact magnified underlying inequalities. This better understanding could help us to address other global challenges – such as climate change – more effectively in the future.

Stories that the media missed

Vanessa Baird co-editor at New Internationalist praised some of the mainstream media coverage but felt that there were important stories that the media had not given enough attention to. One was the way in which many governments have used what she called ‘the cover of Covid’ to suppress human rights and limit free speech.

Vanessa was also critical of media praise for drug companies as modern day heroes, rescuing the world from the clutches of Covid. This was far from the truth she said, as many pharmaceutical companies stood to make huge profits from their Covid vaccines.

• The Media Reform Coalition, which jointly hosted this event with IBT, has launched a ‘BBC and Beyond’ debate to encourage public discussion of the role of public service media in the UK. They will be drawing up a people’s media manifesto later in the year.
• Ofcom, the media regulator, is currently reviewing public service broadcasting (PSB) and IBT has contributed to that review. We are keen to see the Government take steps to secure and strengthen the future of PSB for the next decade. You can read our submission here.

Watch in full: What have we learnt from international coverage of Covid?

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

How Muslim Hands is bringing bread to Yemen this Ramadan

On the eve of Ramadan, Sahirah Javaid from Muslim Hands gives us a behind the scenes look at their successful Blessed Bakeries campaign, which has enabled them to open three bakeries in Yemen.

Ramadan is the most important time of the year for us at Muslim Hands. As a faith-based charity, this special month is where we receive the bulk of our donations from donors across the world. Though we know what projects and campaigns we will be pushing, donations from this month sets the tone of other projects that could also be implemented, to help as many people as possible, in the year ahead.

In the past year due to the generosity of our donors we have raised over £175,000 for our Blessed Bakeries campaign, which has allowed us to open three bakeries in Yemen. This will provide thousands of loaves of bread to women, children, and those with disabilities in Yemen and later Syria who have been internally displaced because of civil war.

We were able to raise a significant amount in a short space of time using a variety of strategies and platforms to increase awareness for this campaign. It was vital to work closely with our partners and colleagues on the ground in Yemen to provide us with the information we needed on the projects, beneficiary stories, images, and videos, which were all used to push this campaign to our donors.

Why Yemen is important in the Islamic faith

We used Facebook and Instagram to share photos and videos of people who were benefitting from the bread factory. We created social media posts from a religious perspective on why Yemen is important in the Islamic faith and shared content around this that many of our donors may not have been aware of. We also created targeted online adverts on Facebook and Google which encouraged our donors to donate towards the campaign. Media coverage was also obtained through radio stations and newspapers where colleagues who had been on the ground were able to share their experiences.

Reaching a range of Muslim audiences

This Ramadan we will be implementing all the above but also utilising fundraising platforms such as Just Giving – YallaGive and Launch Good that allows us to increase and build our donor reach worldwide. Translating our material to languages that are identified by our main donors has proven to be helpful, which has been achieved by having multilingual adverts on Ramadan radio stations throughout the UK and adverts in multilingual newspapers. We have also established relationships with TV channels that have a large Muslim audience base worldwide such as Islam Channel English and Urdu for fundraising and awareness purposes. We have already started distributing our Ramadan mailer to a large portion of our donors, which includes the Blessed Bakeries campaign. We are always looking at innovative ways to share our work with new audiences especially the younger generation. TikTok has been a great way to do this.

How to launch your own podcast

Earlier this year, Susannah Birkwood from WWF International launched her own podcast, Storytelling for Impact, a podcast for people who tell stories that change the world.

We asked Susannah to share some key lessons that she’s learnt along the way.

I first decided I wanted to launch my own podcast in the summer of 2018. It took me a full two and a half years to take action. I lost count of the times that I’d tell myself I didn’t have time to dedicate to it on top of a busy full-time job or that I was foolish to think that people would want to listen to what I had to say. Sometimes I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do it on. On other occasions it just felt too much like hard work. I finally managed to overcome these thoughts and launched Storytelling for Impact early this year. It’s an amazing feeling to have made it happen at long last! Here’s what I’ve learnt since then.

1. Doing a multi-day course is a great way to get started

Taking action on a goal like starting a podcast can feel really difficult – that’s why it took me so long! Doing a multi-day course promising to teach me “how to start a podcast” changed all that. The course I signed up to took place in January on Zoom. Every morning we’d learn about podcasting, but the best part was the afternoons, when we’d put our ideas into action, knowing that there was a group of people waiting to hold us accountable the next day. By the time the week was over, I had a podcast title, a fully-developed concept, my recording and editing software downloaded, my equipment bought, my own theme tune, my trailer published, and a list of guests I wanted to approach for interview. There was no going back. A month later, I launched my first two episodes.

2. All you really need is a mic

Some people invest thousands in getting the highest spec equipment imaginable for their podcast. But if you’re launching your own show, there’s really no need for costly bells and whistles. I paid about £30 for this microphone, spend $9.99 a month on my hosting platform and a few pounds a month to have a simple WordPress website with my own .net domain name. You don’t strictly speaking need to pay for your hosting platform either – you could use a free one like Soundcloud. All you really need is a mic – you can assess whether it’s worth investing in more kit once you’re up and running.

3. It’s not a numbers game

As someone who works in media relations, I tend to be a bit of a snob about the reach that a piece of content gets. I’m used to producing or pitching work that captures several thousand pairs of eyeballs at least – millions when working with broadcast media or global outlets. Podcasts are very different. The number of listeners pales in comparison to those on other media formats, but the people who do listen are highly engaged – around 70% of podcast listeners will listen to all or most of an episode. Wonderfully, they’re also often much keener to hear about complex ideas – as The Times’s Catherine Nixey once wrote, “While the rest of the internet silts up with cats and fake news, the podcast is unashamedly intelligent”. 

Currently I’m getting around 75 downloads in the first 7 days after my episodes are released, putting my show in the top 25% of podcasts, according to Buzzsprout. I’m thrilled at this – and sincerely grateful for every download received so far.

4. Most people are flattered to be asked for an interview

I’m a journalist by background and have interviewed hundreds of people. But, asides from my early teenage years when I used to tell people I was a “freelance journalist” in order to score interviews with my favourite bands, I’ve mostly only done interviews when backed by a big media brand. So having joined the INGO sector four years ago, I was a bit nervous no-one would want to talk to me if I wasn’t representing an outlet everyone had heard of. I needn’t have worried. Asides from a bit of false start – the first two people I approached to interview didn’t seem especially keen – every one of the people I’ve approached to come on the show has been really enthusiastic. It’s worth remembering that most people are flattered to be asked to talk about themselves, particularly when they’re in lockdown. The guest I’ve booked in for one of my upcoming episodes is a huge deal in the journalism world and someone whose work I’ve admired for years. He said yes within hours of being asked.

As the excellent podcaster Oprah Winfrey once said, “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”

Storytelling for Impact is available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy your podcasts. The latest episode is an interview with Rachel Erskine from IBT member Amref Health Africa about ethical storytelling.

Briefing Notes: Unreported World & Channel 4 News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Nevine Mabro at Channel 4 News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

The challenge of changing the media narrative on climate change

The Institute of Development Studies aims to change the dominant media narrative on climate change – and show that this is an issue above all of justice and equality.

Sophie Robinson explains the strategy behind their climate justice campaign.

The media landscape in 2021 is set to be dominated by the big ‘c’s of climate change, COP26 and Covid-19.  But, for those working in communications there is another one – competition. How to secure engagement and attention of time pressed journalists, politicians and social media activists against a backdrop of an unrelenting news cycle with ever increasing numbers of organisations offering comment. 

Our aim at the Institute of Development Studies is to shift the focus of climate change to recognise one of the most easily overlooked elements of the issue – climate inequality.

Typically, world leader events and government initiatives on climate change have been dominated by technological solutions but when it comes to the impacts of climate change, research shows the issue is fundamentally one of (in)justice. The worst impacts of climate change and our ability to adapt to them are felt unequally globally and within countries because of the structural injustices that cause underlying poverty and inequalities. 

This poses an immediate challenge that our communications activity in the year ahead is aiming to address. Here are five principles we are following in order to gain cut through and engagement with our climate justice research:

1. Be inclusive

We are leveraging IDS partnerships and our reputation for participatory action research to meaningfully involve marginalised people. This includes creating participatory videos and photo stories that bring to life the issues relating to inequality. In this way, we should all walk the talk on inclusivity, sharing stories and ensuring those worst affected are represented, in our content, events and podcasts 

2. Inspire rather than despair

There is clearly a need to highlight the urgency of the problem of climate injustice and to communicate the ‘so what?’, ‘why now?’. But, this must go hand in hand with providing constructive solutions and suggestions for those with political power to do things differently. For us, this means working with researchers to identify then communicate actionable recommendations which can then be illustrated with real life stories from inspirational people globally. With so much negativity in the news media, not least due to Covid-19 and lockdown life, this aims to meet the demand from journalist and influencers for positive stories.  

3. Get social

Develop communications that are ‘social first’ and designed to engage with audiences that are active on social platforms. To do this, we’re applying insights from our social media monitoring platform to understand Twitter conversations, hashtags, topic virality and the top influencers by climate theme, in the UK and beyond.  By understanding the dominant conversation topics, and the most engaging posts, we’ll develop creative social media content that in tone, theme and style is as engaging and effective as possible. 

4. Pitch based on insight

When reaching out to journalists, bloggers or podcasters at this intensely busy time and with high competition for stories, it will be even more vital to remember best practice for story pitches. Presenting a clear, compelling story in one line, and remembering who, why, what, where, when, so what?  This is alongside being clear on what is being offered – interviewee, case study, report, images, all tailored to be relevant to the contact. Through a combination of media trained spokespeople and a steady drumbeat of commentary with creative stories, we will cut through to key media for policy audiences and aim to build awareness of our messaging. 

5. Be risk aware

Building relationships with influencers and working in wide-ranging partnerships as we do at IDS, including academics, community groups, businesses or activists can also bring risks.  Ranging from reputation management, including being viewed as too political, to social media abuse towards your organisation, spokespeople or case studies, it makes it critical to have a robust approach to potential risks. At the outset of our climate justice campaign, we’ve completed a risk review and ongoing will evaluate how our messaging and content is being received. This includes considering how content could be interpreted from different external viewpoints with this insight being fed into future messaging. 

Applying these principles, our ambition over the year ahead is to move the debate on climate change to achieve greater recognition that the issue is fundamentally about justice. We hope to influence the dominant narrative on climate change among policymakers and the media, widening it beyond the technology-based solutions to focus on those in the world most at risk. We hope it serves as an important reminder that in our ‘race to zero’ carbon emissions we mustn’t further harm the lives and livelihoods of those already suffering its worst effects, or exclude them from finding the solutions.

Briefing Notes: Guardian Global Development

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Tracy McVeigh at Guardian Development

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

We must tackle the root causes of vaccine inequity

Twenty years ago, MSF launched its pioneering Access Campaign with the aim of securing equitable access to affordable medicines, diagnostics and vaccines. Today, as Roz Scourse writes, the vaccine rollout is a painful reminder of our failure to tackle the root causes of unequal access.

For decades, MSF has seen the impact of inequity in access to health products, including treatments and vaccines, on vulnerable people. The inequities the world is now seeing in access to COVID-19 vaccines is unfortunately another striking example of the broader failures within the current system of medical innovation, which continues to prioritise profit over people with devastating impacts.

There was an estimated 10-year delay between when people living with HIV in the US started to receive lifesaving treatments in the mid-1990s, compared with those living in Africa in the mid-2000s. This lag led to 12 million unnecessary deaths because of lack of access to new antiretroviral drugs. The experiences of frontline MSF healthcare workers responding to the HIV crisis in part led to the launch of the MSF Access Campaign.

We hoped at the beginning of the pandemic that we would not see the same happen with diagnostics, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 but we are tragically seeing this inequity in access play out again in real time.

We are failing to ensure fair and equitable access to vaccines for every country in the world.

There were early international efforts to try and prevent this from happening. The WHO and a number of partners, including Gavi, the Global Vaccine Alliance, launched the COVAX Facility, in an attempt to ensure equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. However, it is clear that the COVAX Facility is so far failing in it aims. Furthermore, COVAX has estimated that it will only be able to provide three per cent of the supply promised to low and middle-income countries during the first half of 2021.

The media has to some extent highlighted the dangers of vaccine nationalism being seen in many high-income countries, and the progress and challenges being faced by COVAX in trying to ensure equitable access. However, too few have asked the more fundamental question of why we keep seeing these issues in the first place, and why the same reasons are also leading to the failure of COVAX.

Why do the same issues of inequity play out over and over again when it comes to accessing lifesaving medical products?

What is going wrong in the pharmaceutical system that means this vast inequity of access is happening? Why are there not enough supplies for everyone? Why can pharmaceutical companies charge eye-watering prices for their products even during a pandemic?

The answer is that the medical innovation system is currently structured to maximise profits for pharmaceutical companies. The monopolies that pharmaceutical companies hold on medical products, including intellectual property rights such as patents, guarantee them an exclusive market and enables them to charge high prices. One thing that this global pandemic has shown us is that monopolising and limiting available supplies of medical products is very dangerous, particularly when the whole world needs access to them at the same time.

COVAX has failed to address the root causes of equitable access.

Unfortunately, there were many lost opportunities to achieve equitable access in the design of COVAX itself. COVAX was created and crafted under the influence of high-income countries, who are heavily influenced by the Big Pharma lobby, as well as Bill Gates, a staunch advocate for business-as-usual and intellectual property rights.

This is an approach that is unsustainable amid a global pandemic. Instead of the artificial supply limitations and high prices that we are seeing now, COVAX and its donor governments could have required pharmaceutical companies to openly license their COVID-19 vaccines, breaking monopolies, maximising available supplies and ensuring access for all. But they didn’t. And the reason why is a question that not enough people are asking.

How INGOs can embrace the changing media landscape

The pandemic has transformed the media landscape, accelerating the shift to digital and remote story gathering practices. Chloe Choppen, author of IBT’s latest report The Media: Where Next? outlines some of the key recommendations for INGOs hoping to take advantage of these changes.

Reshaped by shifting priorities, tightened budgets and a conveyor belt of changing lockdown restrictions, newsrooms and media organisations all over the world have had to adapt to survive. All of these changes have major implications for INGOs wishing to use the media to tell their stories. In our new report, The Media: Where Next? we have tracked the changes that have taken place and identified some key ways that INGOs can take advantage of them to engage more effectively with audiences. Here are our top five recommendations:

1. Embrace change

The pandemic has accelerated key trends that were already taking place across the media. This includes the faster adoption of digital, a move to remote storytelling techniques and a drive towards formats that build stronger connections with audiences online, like digital subscriptions, podcasts and newsletters. Keeping on top of these trends and adapting new storytelling techniques will allow INGOs to tap into the increased potential for engaging more deeply with audiences.

2. Create space for more voices

Worldwide travel restrictions have forced the media and INGOs to move away from relying on UK-based staff to gather international stories. Communication and media teams have successfully adapted, working with a wider range of freelancers, in-country talent, and user-generated content. When the UK’s travel restrictions are finally lifted, it is important that we don’t return to the old methods of gathering stories and instead use this as an opportunity to continue to collaborate and create space for a greater variety of voices.

3. Prioritise how stories are told

Think carefully about how you represent people in your stories. Comic Relief has responded to the ‘white saviour’ row and revised its approach, challenging others in the sector to rethink long established fundraising techniques. To do this effectively, it’s crucial to consider both how stories are told and how they are gathered. Establishing robust, informed consent gathering processes will ensure best ethical practice as well as promote more nuanced storytelling. In an increasingly distrusting media landscape, NGOs must work harder to signal their credibility and transparency to audiences.

4. Take advantage of new formats

Social media moves fast. To improve digital engagement organisations must be willing to adopt more flexible, trial-and-error approaches to storytelling. This is especially true of quick turnaround video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels where establishing processes that allow social media teams to react quickly to trends are vital for reaching audiences. Meanwhile, formats like podcasts and newsletters provide an opportunity for INGOs to demonstrate their expertise, credibility and deepen audience engagement.

5. Collaborate with the media

INGOs should encourage more collaborative relationships with the media, rather than the transactional approach that has developed over recent years. In the changing media landscape, where broadcasters are increasingly limited on resources, INGOs have a lot to offer. Whether that means leaning into the sector’s wealth of experience in interpreting scientific data, or working together to provide a platform for more diverse voices as broadcasters come under pressure to achieve wider representation.

The Media: Where Next? outlines in more detail how events over the past year have impacted the media landscape, what this means for the INGO sector, and how charities can take advantage of the accelerated shift towards digital and embrace new storytelling formats.

The report is now available to download for IBT members.

The Media: Where Next? | Watch Full Report Launch Event

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

We can win the battle against Covid by working together

The world is now several weeks into the biggest vaccination campaign in history, but Africa is once again in danger of being left behind as wealthier regions race to protect their own citizens first.

Joachim Osur from Amref Health Africa gives us the view from Nairobi.

Although the impact of COVID-19 has varied both within and between countries, no nation, regardless of its wealth, has been spared. Indeed, disease epicentres have consistently been urban settlements, meaning that high-income, widely urbanised countries have been hardest hit. A different pattern is likely to be seen in low- and middle-income countries, many of them in Africa: a protracted epidemic with a slow but consistent rise in cases and deaths.

But, as the WHO Director General has said, no one is safe until we all are.

We have learnt the painful lesson that because we are a globalised world, if one person is infected in New York it poses a risk to citizens of London as well as to those of Nairobi, Abuja, Delhi, and Mexico City. By ignoring humanity’s inter-connectedness, governments are ultimately doing a disservice to their own citizens; to those they seek to protect.

But then we encounter a problem: should a government give the same concern to the rest of the world as it does to its own citizens? Should Britain accept that vaccines manufactured on its territory be exported to other countries when its own citizens are not fully vaccinated and dying daily? Should the EU allow vaccine manufacturers to breach vaccine delivery contracts because they have to supply priority groups in other continents?

There is confusion, apprehension and anger over how vaccines are being purchased and distributed across the world.

Since mid-January, health workers in public hospitals in Kenya have downed their tools demanding protection of their health and that of their families. A number of health workers, young and old, have succumbed to the virus: the last widely reported one was a young doctor in his twenties. We are all scared because we are not sure who is next.

We are angry because our governments cannot protect us and our families by providing PPEs, let alone vaccines.

In December 2020, The Economist Intelligence Unit was predicting that low- and middle-income countries would not have “wide access to a vaccine” until the spring of 2022 at the earliest. A UK-based colleague told me that her 87-year-old father-in-law has already received his two vaccine doses. I was reminded that my grandfather in Siaya County, Kenya is of a similar age and unlikely to get the vaccine this year. I hope he will be alive by the time the vaccine reaches him.

High-income countries, most of which are facing a severe form of the pandemic, are fighting for a big share of the vaccines to save their citizens. In the process, they are succumbing to vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism, giving little thought to what is happening elsewhere in the world.

Countries like Kenya seem to have been rendered powerless in the scramble for the vaccines because they cannot flex their economic muscle like their more affluent counterparts.

As of 1st February, 101 million doses of the vaccine had been administered in 64 countries. Fewer than 200,000 of those doses had been administered on the African continent, and this in just three countries . If this pattern continues, the world risks a situation where sizeable numbers of citizens of some countries will have been vaccinated while the pandemic continues to ravage other communities.

Fragmented and preferential access to the COVID vaccine gives the impression that the value of human life is not the same across the world. What if we just stood in solidarity and took humanity to be one and faced our common enemy – COVID – as one world army of humans?

We would then vaccinate all health workers first because they are in the frontline of the battle. We would follow that by vaccinating older people, those with pre-existing health conditions, and essential service providers. Finally, we would vaccinate the rest of the world’s population. Geographical boundaries would not divide us; neither would our economic power.

We would win the battle by working together and at the end we would be proud of ourselves that we stood in solidarity and that we never allowed COVID to divide us.

Briefing Notes: Vice News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Sean Stephens at Vice News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

We need a greener, more dignified and just planet

As Britain prepares to host the all-important COP26 climate change talks, Christine Allen, Director of CAFOD, argues that we have a unique opportunity to reset our economy, our politics, and our society. And the media has a crucial role to play.

As we enter a new year, the climate ought to be at the forefront of many people’s minds. There have been news reports that 2020 was the joint hottest year on record and in only eleven short months, Glasgow will host COP26 – the meeting of world leaders to discuss the climate crisis.

Although this annual meeting has been a fixture for over a quarter of a century, this year will be different. As we deal with the latest COVID restrictions, the common thread that binds us all, locked down in our homes, is a sense of the deep interconnectedness to each other and the planet. Recognising that we need each other, and we each have a part to play does wonders for our mental health. For many of us, the muted noise of daily business opened us up to the wonder and beauty of nature.

We know that we simply cannot go back to the way things were

To bring about a more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources, then politics and policies must change. Pope Francis’s letter on the environment in 2015, Laudato Si’, has helped to signpost the way. It was an eloquent and influential call for everyone to revise their relationship with our planet and with one another. Published when we were working towards the Paris climate negotiations, Laudato Si’ was seen as a critical intervention, with heads of state and diplomats alike acknowledging its significant effect.

Rather than simply being the Catholic Church’s statement on the environment from a ‘green pope’, Francis was calling for a radical conversion to a new society – where our politics, economy and social organisation benefit our planet and everyone on it. In giving the letter the subtitle ‘Our Common Home’, Francis asked us to see ourselves as a family in a home: a message that seems even more relevant in light of the pandemic.

Francis emphasises the dignity of all people, especially those who are poorest and least recognised in society. Whether it is investing in health and social care, green jobs or renewable energy sources, strengthening the social safety net or introducing a basic income, that respect for our common humanity must be at the forefront.

We have all shown how we can respond to a rapidly changing world

The changes we have lived through, and are still living through with the pandemic, shows what can be achieved with political will. In his call for a radical reset not just a return to an old normal, Pope Francis articulates what so many people are feeling. CAFOD supporters are now adding their voices to his most recent call.

In our plans for rebuilding from the pandemic, we reclaim the common home the Pope calls us to care for. This means plans for recovering from the coronavirus pandemic must also tackle the other injustices and inequalities that plague our common home. We have gone through too much in this crisis to simply return to the ‘old normal’ when the pandemic is over. Instead, the Holy Father implores us to build a ‘better normal’ – including by making sure the money governments are pumping into the economy is used to create green and decent jobs rather than bailing out polluters. It also means turning our climate ambitions from vague future targets to immediate cuts in emissions.

The media has a crucial role to play

As we approach COP26 and emerge from the pandemic, we need the media to portray the realities of the climate emergency – reporting on how people and communities are affected and ensuring that those stories are rooted in their voices and lived experience.  Hearing their voices reminds us that this issue isn’t a white middle-class concern – it’s life and death for so many who are vulnerable to climate shocks and who pay the price for our consumption.

The media’s approach to the climate crisis has been improving hugely over the past few years, most notably with the Guardian’s push to change the terms used by all their journalists to accurately describe the environmental crisis.

There is also improved reporting on the climate crisis with clearer links connecting local and the global; raising awareness with audiences who in turn we hope will campaign to persuade governments to prioritise urgent change.

Now is our unique opportunity to reset our economy, our politics, and our society. To build a thriving post-pandemic world, fulfilling the principles at the heart of Pope Francis’ call for conversion to a greener, more dignified and just planet.

International content is under threat

IBT Director Mark Galloway fears that international content is especially vulnerable, as public service broadcasters face radical change.

The pandemic has seen a big increase in consumption of TV news and has given public service broadcasters like the BBC and Channel 4 a much needed boost. Television news has long been the main source of information about the wider world for most people in the UK and has the unique ability to reach large, mainstream audiences. It plays a crucial role for NGOs wishing to reach beyond their core constituencies.

However, the future of the UK’s distinctive public service broadcasting (PSB) system is in doubt. The media regulator Ofcom is conducting a review, Small Screen: Big Debate, with the aim of strengthening and maintaining public service broadcasting in the face of threats from Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Apple. Both the BBC and Channel 4 face financial uncertainty and the Ofcom review is critical to the future of PSB.

In December, Ofcom announced its initial findings. Its verdict was devastating for the PSBs. It said that the traditional system of broadcasting in the UK is ‘unlikely to survive’ as a result of changes to technology, financing and viewer habits. Ofcom says that the remits of the PSBs will have to be ‘radically overhauled.’

What’s clear is that major change is underway

It’s likely that Ofcom will redefine PSB so that it has a much stronger digital presence. Channel 4 has already anticipated this change with its recent announcement of a digital first policy. It’s also possible that funding for public service content may be diversified to suppliers other than the traditional public service broadcasters, and platforms like Netflix may be required to produce public service content.

Ofcom has announced a public consultation on its proposals, before they are finalised and put forward to government. IBT will be submitting evidence to the Ofcom consultation in order to strengthen the role of international content. We will be working with our members to encourage them to submit evidence too, as Ofcom will be influenced by the number of submissions it receives.

Some of the changes proposed by Ofcom are to be welcomed such as the suggestion that the streaming services like Netflix should be required to produce the equivalent of public service content. The details of this have yet to be fleshed out.

Many issues are in play

The size of the BBC, whether licence fee money should go to other broadcasters like Sky Arts, privatisation of Channel 4, a redefinition of PSB to include online content and much more.

The PSBs face major funding challenges. Channel 4 has lost advertising revenue and the BBC is making cuts to its programme budget to pay for the age related licence fee concession. The new BBC Director General Tim Davie has made it clear that in the future the BBC will do less. ‘The BBC has spread itself too thinly‘ he recently told the Culture and Media Select Committee. ‘We need to make choices about the best use of limited resources.’

What will the broadcasters cut?

Two genres are guaranteed a major role in any future PSB system – entertainment and news. Big entertainment shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The Great British Bake Off will continue as they bring in mass audiences and PSB makes no sense if it doesn’t reach large numbers of people. News will stay as it is the television genre most valued by audiences.

My fear is that international content is the genre that is most vulnerable. It’s expensive to make and it has always had to fight for its place in the schedule. I’m thinking of programmes like BBC2’s Once Upon a Time in Iraq, BBC1’s Sue Perkins: Along the US-Mexico Border, and Channel 4’s Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip. These programmes are made for UK audiences, they take us on a journey and show us stories and issues that matter. Some have a much gentler tone like BBC4’s wonderful Handmade in Africa. Because they are made with a UK perspective, for a UK audience, these programmes don’t sell to other territories and they don’t generate commercial revenue like the latest David Attenborough show. And you will not find them on Netflix or Amazon.

Why does this international content matter?

Isn’t it enough to have good quality international news? No, it isn’t. Television news does a good job of covering global stories but its range is narrow and due to financial pressures, is narrowing even further. The big international stories of the day are covered but these inevitably present a limited picture of what life is like for people living in other countries. And not all TV viewers watch the news. Documentaries and drama fill in the gaps and they appeal to different audiences. They give us context and provide a much more realistic idea of what normal life is like in other places. They allow us to get to know real people and to connect with them emotionally.

We need television to do more than just focus on war, famine and natural disasters, because a nuanced understanding of the world is essential for our future place in the world. Now that Britain has left the European Union, there is a real danger that our horizons will narrow, that we will become more insular and inward looking. Global Britain needs citizens who are well informed and can engage with the world, economically, socially, culturally and politically.

Television has a unique role to play in engaging us with the world because it has the ability to reach mass audiences. Those who already have an interest in global stories and issues know where they can find the information they need. But the danger is that this small proportion of the population will be super served and the rest will be neglected. As Ofcom launches its consultation on the future of public service broadcasting, we hope that IBT members will join us in making the case for a wide range of international content.

Global Britain in a post-Brexit world – who will deliver it?

As the UK prepares to leave the EU, there is an opportunity for international NGOs to show that ‘Global Britain’ is more than just rhetoric, writes Alistair Burnett.

Global Britain – that is the future promised for the UK in the post-Brexit world that comes into being at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but has it yet progressed beyond rhetoric?

When Boris Johnson’s government announced its Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign affairs in February this year, it looked like a strategic approach examining all aspects of the UK’s role in the world was to be conducted.

That review is still not complete and is not expected to be published before the spring, yet several key announcements have already been made seemingly with short-term politics, rather than long-term strategy, in mind.

The merger of the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development – which so far looks more like a takeover of the latter by the former – has been accompanied by cuts in the aid budget and the (ostensibly temporary) abandonment of the pledge to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid.

At the same time, Prime Minister Johnson has announced a big increase in spending on the military and we’ve heard grandiose rhetoric from the Foreign and Defence Secretaries about returning British naval power east of Suez, including deploying one of the UK’s new aircraft carriers to the South China Sea to support American efforts to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims there.

If there’s an overarching strategy here, it is difficult to discern any coherence

Britain is a medium-sized military and economic power which has accrued a great deal of soft power in recent decades, not least through the work of DFID and being one of very few UN states to honour the 0.7% commitment.

This appears to be lost on the current cabinet who seem intent on appeasing critics of aid on the right of the party and the media, while trying to deflect attention from the diminution of UK economic and diplomatic power predicted to result from leaving the EU.

It is important to remember Britain’s role and reputation in the world is not just dependent on what its government does

Civil society also plays its part and has real influence.

What British aid and development NGO staff do day in day out, in their work to eliminate global poverty and to improve global health, is Britain playing a positive role in the world.

The same goes for what journalists at BBC World Service or British scientists or academics at British universities do day in day out.

So as Britain prepares to slip anchor from the EU, its harbour of the past five decades, there is an opening for civil society, particularly international NGOs, to show that ‘Global Britain’ is more than rhetoric.

Even if there is reduced funding available from the government and the public as a result of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, international aid organisations can continue their work to help people in the world’s poorest communities to improve their lives.

And despite the Johnson government’s failure to listen to calls to preserve an independent DFID and to maintain its commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid, NGOs need to continue to advocate for the new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office to retain both DFID’s erstwhile priorities and its staff who have built up significant expertise in reducing global poverty.

It is also essential for NGOs to continue talking to the public through their own channels and to continue working with the media to tell the stories of the difference their work – and UK aid – is making to the lives of the world’s poorest people.

Brexit doesn’t mean turning our backs on the world and Global Britain provides an opportunity for humanitarian and development organisations and their supporters to show the UK remains positively engaged in building a better world for all where no one is left behind.

Alistair Burnett is a Trustee of IBT and former Director of News at Sightsavers and Editor of Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

Briefing Notes: Times Radio

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Taking British politics, jargon and colonialism out of our language

Maryam Mohsin, media manager at Bond, is leading a project to review and update some of the language that is commonly used in the international development sector. It’s time, she says, for change.

When your objective is trying to change something, it’s tricky to know where to start. Do you first try and change what you do, or should you start by changing what you say?

The risk of doing the latter first is that it could lead to a false sense of “mission accomplished” without really digging deep and addressing why the change needs to be made. As we know, walking the talk is the hard bit. The inevitable answer is that you must do a bit of both.

This is exactly what Bond has been working on. How can we live our values through our work, policies, and how we communicate and treat others? It has been a turbulent year for our sector, and I am not even going to begin to mention a certain pandemic.

We have seen incredible social shifts that speak to the issues we hold dear – the death of George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement putting sexual harassment, violence, and gender inequality to the fore, #CharitySoWhite, #ShowTheSalary, #ShiftThePower – all of these critical issues have gathered momentum and have made it clear that no sector, including ours, is immune from the changes so desperately needed if we are to create a fair, just and equal society.

As a membership-based organisation, this obviously includes Bond. We are in the process of getting our “house in order” on a range of issues, from salary transparency, equity and safeguarding, to positive action on diversity and inclusion.

The area of work that I have been driving internally, with support from colleagues at Bond, from the UK NGO sector and from international civil society groups, is around our language.

It has been a thought-provoking process, and we still have some way to go, but we have made good progress.

Here are a few things we have learnt so far:

“Aid,” “beneficiaries” and “developing countries” have to go

These are the top three words we no longer want to use. Are these also in your top three? If yes, then I am glad we agree, if not, send me an email and I will keep the tally going.

The problem is, despite being great at saying what we want to get rid of, it is much harder to find acceptable universal alternatives, so here is an attempt (suggestions welcome).

“Aid” is an outdated concept that does not reflect the breadth of the work we deliver, nor the complexity. It suggests countries are helpless and in need of handouts rather than fairness, livelihoods, infrastructure, health systems and support, amongst many other things. At Bond, we are going to make a concerted effort to use “development” and/or “humanitarian assistance” instead.

Thankfully, most of us at Bond wince when we hear the word “beneficiaries” and have been avoiding any language that dehumanises or removes people’s agency. We instead use terms such as “the communities we work with,” “people who have been marginalised” or “project participants.”

“Developing countries” was ditched long ago by the World Bank, and is widely disliked for being outdated, subjective and patronising. As the Sustainable Development Goals make clear, living in a healthy, just, safe, and sustainable planet should be everyone’s goal, and inequality and poverty can exist anywhere.

The conclusion we have reached is to be as specific and accurate as possible when taking about other countries and use “lower income countries” or “world’s most fragile states”.

Ditch the jargon and false claims

As a sector, we use too much jargon. This excessive use of buzzwords and acronyms, with zero context makes our work inaccessible, creates barriers and excludes people, especially the public or policymakers. We need to stop using terms like “localisation,” “innovation,” “capacity building”.

As a sector we have also been guilty of giving the UK credit for showing leadership/continued leadership on a range of issues that we would in fact “like” the UK to show leadership on. There are exceptions, such as the level of investment the UK makes into tackling infectious disease, and we should be proud of this. But is the UK showing leadership right now on gender-based violence or on girls’ education or climate change? Claims of “UK leadership” must be backed by evidence before we make them, otherwise we are simply flattering egos and perpetuating myths.

Development and humanitarian assistance are political. But our language should remain nonpartisan

Political parties will come and go, but inequalities will remain if our language begins to mirror that of the people in power, especially if the intentions behind the rhetoric are disingenuous.

A good example of this is “Global Britain” or “aid in the national interest” or even “Build Back Better”. Nobody would disagree that the UK being an outward-looking nation, working in partnership with others for the global good, would be a noble cause, or that Covid-19 has pushed millions of people into poverty and the UK should work with others to tackle this global pandemic.

However, how these political phrases translate into action is out of our hands and can’t be controlled. Can we really be confident that by using similar language, mirroring the language of power, we can change the rhetoric?

It’s also impossible to ignore that some of these phrases, intentionally or unintentionally, hark back to colonialism and tied aid. They do not reflect the present or future, where the British public and NGOs want to see development assistance going to the people who need it the most rather than towards the UK’s short term political or economic endeavours.

Even the above three reflections will spark lots of debate, and every organisation will have its own journey and perspective. In no way does Bond expect this approach to work for everyone. But for Bond – we need to practise what we preach, if we are to have legitimacy and influence, and it is important that we aim to set the bar high for ourselves and encourage others to do the same.

Briefing Notes: TikTok

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Hannah Bennett at TikTok & Nana Crawford at British Red Cross

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

How British Red Cross found their biggest audience on TikTok

TikTok is the fastest growing social platform of 2020 and has become an important tool for community building, brand engagement and even social activism. This year, British Red Cross have grown their TikTok channel into their largest social media audience in just a few months. Nana Crawford, Social Media Manager at British Red Cross, gives her top 5 tips for NGOs wanting to make the most of TikTok.

1. Choose the right moment to launch your channel

After seeing that the users on TikTok were predominantly quite young, we decided to use it for our campaign on introducing first aid into the school curriculum. We knew this would be a strong message for the younger TikTok audience, and would be something they might already be familiar with from conversations in their schools and colleges. That was a great starting point for us, and allowed us to test out different types of content.

2. Be flexible with your content production

I would always recommend that if you are going to start a brand TikTok channel, you need to have a lot of flexibility to be able to do whatever you want and be really creative. Otherwise you’re just recreating another Instagram channel on TikTok, and that’s not the point. The nature of the content on TikTok means that you need a different sign off process for content – basically, not have one! It doesn’t make sense to do a comedy sketch video and then send it to a director for sign off, because they wouldn’t get it and you would lose the momentum of posting the video.

3. Experiment to discover what your audience likes

It can be really hit and miss with what content does well on TikTok, so we’re still experimenting with different things. Sometimes we’ll post a video thinking it will do really well, and then it doesn’t. Then we’ll post something random we’ve been sent in by a volunteer, and it gets loads of engagement! A lot of it is to do with trying things and learning what your audience likes. Then it’s all about the timing and taking advantage of the hashtag challenges.

4. Stay true to your brand values

On TikTok it’s really hard to have a specific campaign goal in a sense of conversions, because it’s difficult to track on the app. Instead, you need to approach it from a brand awareness perspective. For us it was a great opportunity to show just how relevant we are, and that we can produce content that appeals to a young audience in their style. But everyone needs to find their niche and find what works for them. There’s no point trying to replicate what someone else has done, because that’s not the point of TikTok. The point of TikTok is to showcase your personality, or your brand’s personality. 

5. Engage your wider networks and volunteers

It’s not always our team that comes up with the ideas. It’s been a great opportunity to engage with our younger volunteers. They’ll often send us ideas or TikToks they’ve done, which is great because it’s a channel that they’re familiar with. For example, if a volunteer sends us a dance they want us to share, it also gives us a chance to profile some of the amazing volunteers we work with, which is really nice.

Comic Relief is right to stop sending celebrities to Africa

Comic Relief’s decision to no longer send celebrities to African nations as part of its fundraising appeals is a welcome move, and will hopefully go some way towards dispelling the myths that exist around Africa, says Chine Mcdonald.

In the year I was born, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure got their pop star friends together, including U2’s Bono, Sting, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, to create a song to help raise money for those affected by the famine in Ethiopia. Their efforts are of course to be applauded, but the problem is that no song in popular culture in my lifetime has done more to propagate a problematic picture of Africa than Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’

I’ll admit it, the song used to be one of my Christmas favourites. Its catchiness masks its deeply warped view of what Africa is actually like. I remember when the penny dropped, and I stopped singing it. I realised that the ‘Africa’ sung about by these 1980s pop stars bore little resemblance to the continent I knew.

“And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time

The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life (Ooh)

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow

Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

They had got one thing right: snow was unlikely, but my family back home in Nigeria were full of life. When I think about nothing growing, nor rain falling, my mind harks back to the images of lush greenness I have seen as the plane makes its descent into Port Harcourt. I remember the times of being caught in the heavy downpours during the rainy season. None of these are the first things that come to mind when most British people think of Africa. The narrative is of the desolate place described in the Band Aid single.

It’s time to move away from the “single story”

As Mark Curtis, director of the World Development Movement, said when the song was re-released for a new generation in 2004: “It conjures up an image of a continent inhabited entirely by starving children with flies on their faces sitting in the sun-baked bed of a dried up stream.” This is not to deny that many countries in Africa do experience drought and famine and are facing the full effects of climate change as a present reality. What is missing, however, is room for both the luscious greens and the parched landscapes to exist.

The irony of the question ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’being posed in a charity single to help during the Ethiopian famine is that Christianity, the reason for Christmas, existed in Ethiopia centuries before Europeans arrived, Bibles in hand. Two thirds of modern-day Ethiopians are Christian, with the majority of those belonging to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church – one of the oldest organised Christian groups in the world. They know it’s Christmas.

Being an African and a British charity fundraiser is sometimes a strange place to be. My day job is to help find ways to tell stories that help members of the public see the desperate need that exists for people in some of the poorest and most marginalised communities around the world. But all my life I have struggled with what author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls this “single story” perpetuated about Africa.

The international development sector has some part to play in having, for decades, presented a single story of people from African nations. That’s why I’m so glad that Comic Relief has announced it will no longer send celebrities to Africa and are choosing to reimagine their use of imagery and video, using work from African film-makers to tell their own stories of the need that they see through their own eyes.

Tell stories that draw on our shared humanity, not our differences

We who work within development have been having conversations for years, challenging ourselves to do better when it comes to our depictions of the communities we work with, thinking differently about the language we use in our fundraising appeals.

At Christian Aid, our imagery aims to present people with dignity, and we are extremely thankful for the generosity of our churches and supporters who give to our work – especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a charity fundraiser, I want us to tell stories that draw on our shared humanity, not our difference, that elicit not just pity in the prospective donor, but an empathy that comes from knowing that these are people made in the image of God just like us. We are not superior. We are not the saviour. We join in solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world and rage at the injustice that sees them caught up by broken economic systems, conflict and humanitarian disaster.

I think we need to give the British public far more credit; they are able to understand stories with more texture, complexity and nuance and still be compelled to give. We don’t have to choose lazy tropes and stereotypes that put forward simple and binary stories.

As Adichie said in her TED talk The Danger of a Single Story: “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

This article originally appeared on Premier Christianity. Find out more or subscribe to Premier Christianity magazine here.

Watch in full: Anna Doble, Digital Editor at BBC World Service

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: BBC World Service Digital

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Arresting Decline Needs More Arresting Stories

Former IBT Director, Paddy Coulter, believes it’s time for the international development sector to be more assertive in the face of a decline in public support.

INGOs need to assert far more confidently the founding values of their organisations.  They should not let themselves be driven by internal marketing and fundraising pressures in these economically challenging times. That was the message which sang out to me from a recent Oxford academic webinar on the topic of ‘Aid Agencies: Past, Present & Future’.

This is not the time to retreat into tired old communication tropes of the Lowest Common Denominator. Trustees and senior management must accept that the erosion of public support is a phenomenon of the past decade that had set in long before more recent scandals engulfed charities in negative publicity.  Numbers donating to UK INGOs have halved over the decade, falling from 18.7 million in 2013 to 9.9 million by 2019, according to research by the Development Engagement Lab of Birmingham University.

But if the history of international development campaigning in the UK shows anything, it is the need for relentless reinvention.

Aid may not be the only answer to global poverty but the creative Make Poverty History initiative of 2005 helped galvanise public mobilisation that saw the UK achieve the 0.7% aid target in 2013 – the first G7 country to meet this UN target.

Of course, what has been built up can go back down and certainly the fractious political climate of recent years is far from propitious, but can it really be said that INGOs have played a clever hand over this period? The inter-agency Campaign to Defend Aid and Development, set up in 2017, rightly insists that the focus should be on communicating progress in tackling poverty and the possibility of its elimination. But the Campaign’s audience research, Public Insight, draws attention to the necessity of redressing “years of under-investment” in what it calls the brand of international development.

Mark Galloway, Director of the International Broadcasting Trust, detects encouraging signs that agencies are moving off the back foot, instancing Save the Children’s The People in the Pictures project on ethical storytelling, which led to new guidelines for how its media and fundraising teams should work with and represent beneficiaries, and a similar initiative by Amref in the UK. He also cites WaterAid’s innovative ways of fundraising, attempting to move away from a transactional approach. But much greater creativity is called for across the whole INGO sector to share compelling stories of empowerment and development effectiveness. These will be needed more than ever in the face of the economic havoc wreaked by the Covid pandemic.

The 2020 Global Poverty Report of the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) reminds us just how much development progress had been made pre-Covid, with  65 out of 75 developing countries studied significantly reducing poverty between 2000 and 2019. Forty seven of these countries were on track to halve poverty across vital dimensions such as health, nutrition and sanitation.

This is the time for INGO managers to regain their confidence, double down on their investment in communications, and speak out with much smarter, more arresting messages.

Watch in full: Tim Singleton, Head of International News at Sky News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: Sky News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

The Challenges of Reporting in a Covid World

Tim Singleton, just a few months into his new role as Head of International News at Sky, gives a personal view of the challenges of reporting in the era of Covid.

What an extraordinary time we are living through. As journalists, we are trained to observe and report. But the pandemic is something we are all experiencing too. Which isn’t to say we are exceptional as journalists, but it’s a reminder that we need to deal with what’s happening in our home lives as well as our professional lives.

In practical terms the pandemic has meant a sea change in how we operate as a TV news operation. We need to work responsibly in terms of protection and social distancing, and adapt to working from home as so many have. Yet for Sky News, we also feel a responsibility to still get to the heart of the story, despite the hurdles that stand in our way.

This was illustrated in a most vivid way by Stuart Ramsay’s reporting from Bergamo earlier in the year. We all knew that Italy was in lockdown and had a problem. But no one had seen evidence of what it meant until Stuart and his team brought a hellish perspective to our screens from the hospitals there, and a warning from Italian doctors to the UK – act before it’s too late.

Now, a personal perspective… I know that the NHS listened and learned from what happened in Italy. I joined Sky in June, after a three year absence from journalism working as Director of Comms for DFID. Just three weeks after starting, my appendix grumbled and then burst, meaning a short stay at Northwick Park hospital and a slightly longer absence from my new colleagues. Which was inconvenient to say the least! But one nurse there did tell me it was the Italian experience that opened the hospital authorities’ eyes to what was coming. If Sky News played some part in that, then we should be proud of what we achieved.

Sky remains committed to international coverage, despite the challenges of filming abroad in a world of Covid

One practical implication of the pandemic has been a closing of borders across the world, but that hasn’t stopped us telling the story. Our correspondent in India, Neville Lazarus, filed a series of telling despatches about what’s happening there; we have done the same from our bureau in South Africa. Sky News has been unerring in its commitment to reporting on Covid’s spread across North and South America. And just a few days ago, Alex Crawford sent a distressing, upsetting but necessary report from Yemen, where Covid is just one factor among many in the rarely told story of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

We’re also very pleased that we refused to take our eyes off the climate ball. While the world focuses on Covid, this summer has seen the second largest Arctic ice melt on record. Sky News sent Adam Parsons to Iceland to see the melting glaciers, and Stuart Ramsay to Brazil to see the devastating – and under-reported – fires in the Amazon and Pantanal regions. Travel may be tough in a Covid world, but it shouldn’t stop us revealing truth and witnessing reality.

Sky News is particularly grateful to all the journalists and fixers who live and work in the countries we operate in. None of what we’ve achieved this year would have been possible without their commitment. And for them too, as well as us, a Covid world is an often difficult world.

Watch in full: Sarah Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: Facebook

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

5 ways in which the UK media can improve its coverage of COVID-19 in Africa

Africa Bracing for a Head-On Collision with Coronavirus, The coronavirus could devastate poor countries, African Countries Fear They Are Defenceless Against Inevitable Spread of Coronavirus. These are just some of the headlines that have appeared since the first cases of coronavirus were confirmed on the African continent. As we write, the number of confirmed cases in Africa has just passed 1 million. Rates of testing vary dramatically from one country to the next, suggesting we may not be seeing the full picture – but the pandemic is evolving every day, and with each new development come fresh predictions of how hard the continent is likely to be hit. While this desire to paint the definitive picture – to tell what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “a single story” – is understandable, it’s not always helpful. With this in mind, here are five ways in which the UK can improve its coverage of the crisis.

1. Remember that Africa is not one country

There is huge variation in experience, both between and within countries, communities and cultures. National authorities in Africa have taken a range of different approaches, just as they have elsewhere. It would be hard to speak of one common European experience: just compare the UK’s response with that of Sweden or Germany. In the same way, there are very few parallels to be drawn between the experience of Senegal – which acted swiftly to close its borders, has opted for widespread testing, and is implementing lessons learned during the Ebola crisis of 2014 to 2016 – and that of Tanzania, whose response has been hard for both local and international media to evaluate. Focusing on continent-wide trends is certainly important: but drilling down to look at the lived experience of countries and communities is equally so, and will make for richer reporting.

2. Tell stories of “rational hope”

The doomsday scenarios laid out by some commentators overlook the many success stories coming out of the continent. While it’s important to remain clear-sighted about the sharp rise in cases – and the already-apparent secondary impacts of the pandemic – we can, in parallel, continue to shine a light on examples of regional cooperation, innovative partnerships, strong leadership, pioneering research, and community-led change. Among the experiences of 55 countries there are both lessons to be learned, and reasons to be hopeful.

3. Make the personal political

South African writer Sisonke Msimang warns that well-told stories can create an “illusion of solidarity” that stops us from taking action. When we read about an exceptional individual who has overcome their circumstances, our feelings about that person can blind us to the structural inequalities that have created those circumstances. This holds true for the hero narratives we’ve been seeing in the stories of frontline health workers, in Africa and around the world, putting themselves at risk to save lives.

Yes, it is inspiring to read about extraordinary people stepping up to shield their families and communities from the worst of the crisis. But let’s put those stories in context and let’s use them to galvanise our collective efforts to create meaningful, measurable, systemic change.

4. Continue to report from Africa in a nuanced way

This global crisis has highlighted our interconnectedness. It has thrown into sharp focus the importance of strong, resilient health systems staffed by trained (and paid and protected) health workers. It has exposed long-standing fault lines and deepened inequalities and its ripple effects will continue to be felt long after the crisis has peaked.

What happens in Africa matters everywhere: because we are a global community, meeting common challenges with shared solutions. As the world recovers and rebuilds, let’s retain the sense of solidarity that has powered efforts to fight the pandemic. Let’s ensure that Africa continues to make headlines and that the stories that get traction are complex and varied.

5. Elevate African expertise

Too often, African voices are excluded from conversations about COVID-19 on the continent – and this despite the ubiquity of digital platforms that allow us to transcend distance. There is no shortage of expertise in Africa. Organisations such as the Mo Ibrahim Foundation have drawn on the wealth of available data to present a clear and accurate picture of the COVID-19 context, highlighting where efforts can be concentrated in the management and mitigation of the pandemic. We have also seen the Global Partnership for Sustainable Data call on the members of its network to support each other with vital resources, produce and analyse quality data, implement good practices, and share experiences. Amref Health Africa has teamed up with Dalberg to run #AfricaDialogues, a fortnightly series of webinars bringing African expertise to a global audience.

Journalists and editors should use this opportunity to seek out new voices, to amplify “local talent”, and to build relationships that will outlast the crisis. INGOs have a responsibility too, to put forward in-country colleagues and to elevate their expertise.

Rachel Erskine and Janice Njoroge, are Communications Managers with Amref Health Africa UK and Kenya respectively. Together, they co-chair Amref’s Global Website and Social Media Working Group. This blog represents the views of the authors rather than those of the organisation they work for.

How to pitch to The Independent

International coverage has always been one of The Independent’s priorities.

At our latest online briefing we spoke to Gemma Fox, Deputy International Editor at The Independent to hear more about the types of stories they are interested in and how to pitch to them.

“We’re all about spending time with stories, having those longer features, those analyses, those really important interviews, and making sure we’re telling the stories that do matter.”

Gemma highlighted that their audience has a strong interest in international stories, and discussed with our members the stories that receive the most engagement. They have invested significantly in their foreign coverage, with correspondents based all over the world and Gemma noted the importance of ethical, in-depth storytelling.

“If there’s an angle that you feel hasn’t perhaps received enough attention in the media, that is hugely important, do get in touch.”

Reassuringly, she also noted that generally the pitches she receives from NGOs are of good quality with the story clearly labelled and described, with information about access and interviewees.

Find out more in our ‘Meet the Editor’ interview below. Registered IBT Members can read the detailed briefing notes and watch the full briefing recording from the membership dashboard.

Watch in full: Gemma Fox, Deputy International Editor from The Independent

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: The Independent

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Anything But Normal: How the media can be a force for change in the aftermath of Covid-19

Abbie Wells writes about Practical Action’s new campaign and urges the media to work with INGOs as a force for change in the aftermath of Covid-19.

Coronavirus has radically changed life as we know it, but what’s clear is that there’s huge enthusiasm and support for the world not to go back to normal once it’s over – pollution levels are at a record low, plant and animal species that were dwindling are making a resurgence and the world as we know it is unrecognisable. What the world needs now is INGOs, private sector, governments and institutions to work in collaboration and partnership to forge a new world order that protects and benefits those that have suffered the worst effects of Covid-19.

To us, collaboration is key and our work with big corporates and foundations enables us to look up from the detail and the grass roots, take a different perspective and create answers to multi-layered problems. In working with us, we help ensure the private sector understands the needs of the people they want to work with.

A unique opportunity for the media to use their influence

The media should play a key role in helping the world emerge for the better – looking at the way they operate and act almost as convenors of those who can help make change happen, rather than simply operating as news broadcasters. This is a unique opportunity for the media to use their powerful influence as a force for good, in a world where objectivity is fine, but even objectivity itself has become politicised.

Practical Action has many examples of working with the media to generate positive, inspirational and mutually-beneficial coverage that has gone far beyond a simple article in a newspaper. For example, recently, Damian Carrington, The Guardian’s Environment Editor travelled to Sudan to see one of our projects that is helping farmers at the coalface of climate change to regreen the desert and change their lives.

This article was seen by the Head of UNEP in Sudan who went on to share it with the Sudanese Prime Minister and the wider donor community, including DfID. A great example of the impact a positive piece of media coverage can have.

We’ve also worked with a number of Bauer Media outlets including Magic FM and Absolute Radio through partnerships on our UK AidMatch campaigns. These partnerships are important for reaching new people with development messages but equally as a reciprocal, collaborative relationship that benefits Bauer financially and Practical Action in building support and fundraising.

The world should not return to the way it was

At Practical Action we’ve launched a campaign called Anything But Normal, calling for the world not to return to its previous state before coronavirus hit. There’s already been some great strides in the discussion with BBC Radio 4, BBC Sounds and the World Service running a series called ‘Rethink’ focusing on how the world can emerge in a better position post covid-19 and The World Economic Forum are hosting a number of discussions entitled ‘The Great Reset’ which bring together thought leaders, NGOs, the private sector and the media. But there’s more to do and the conversation needs to continue to gather pace and not become side-lined and forgotten.

Collaborations such as that which BBC Futures developed with NESTA are a perfect example of the media working in partnership with NGOs to effect change and at Practical Action it’s something we’re keen to explore.

Briefing Notes: BBC News Planning

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Your Monthly Briefing • July 2020

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Sola Tayo, BBC News Planning Desk

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: Twitter for Trustees

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

How to use Twitter as an NGO Trustee

Twitter’s Katy Minshall shares her 4 top tips for how NGO Trustees can make the most of the social media platform. 

We recently held a special training session for Trustees from IBT’s member organisations to look at how a Trustee can join Twitter and use the platform to promote the work of their charity, and help a charity to achieve its strategic goals. Here, our speaker Katy Minshall, Head of UK Government, Public Policy and Philanthropy shares her top tips for making the most of Twitter.

1. Tweet more

Don’t be shy to send more tweets. Don’t be afraid to retweet and experiment with tweeting at different times of the day, and tweeting different content. Just see what works. Sometimes it will get lots of engagement, sometimes it won’t, but don’t be afraid to tweet more.

2. Piggyback on trending hashtags

Sharing your unique perspective on a trending conversation will give you the opportunity to be exposed to new followers who are looking at that hashtag. It will ensure you are tweeting content that is relevant, topical and timely.

3. Have a voice

Define your style and be consistent about it. Where you can, tweet with personality. Even something as basic as using an emoji, or engaging more with your followers and replying to those who tweet at you. Having that voice, and tweeting with personality will go a long way.

4. Drive impact with media

Your best allies for impactful content are polls, videos, images and GIFs. The more, and the richer quality of media you can use, the more likely it is your tweet will be successful.

Watch our ‘Meet the Expert’ interview with Katy below. Registered IBT Members can read the detailed briefing notes from the membership dashboard.

How the media can help us achieve a real and sustainable green recovery

Luna Williams reflects on some of the ways in which the media has chosen to report the positive environmental impacts of the pandemic.

As lockdown draws to a close in the UK, commentators have highlighted some of the positive impacts on the environment. As business closures, travel restrictions, and social distancing policies have been rolled out across the world, the Earth’s airways, seas and roads have been substantially cleared of human activity. With this, so have many of the unattractive elements of humankind’s presence on the planet.

Carbon and nitrogen oxide emissions have plummeted. In China, carbon emissions are down 25% compared to the same period last year, and nitrogen oxide levels dropped 50% in the same period. This story is much the same in other locked-down countries. Since the US implemented restrictions in March, cities around the country have seen massive reductions in pollution levels; New York alone has seen a carbon reduction of almost 60% in just over a month. Similarly, satellite imagery from NASA has shown visible signs of greenhouses gasses clearing across Europe and data has indicated significant drops in European countries’ pollution levels. In the UK, air quality has improved by up to 60% in some cities since the lockdown, and this is mirrored in Italy, Germany, Spain and France.

‘The Earth is slowly healing’ the media tells us

Mainstream and social media reporting has reflected this shift, with many reporters and members of the public coming forward to celebrate the idea that the Earth is healing while humanity hits the pause button. Images of formerly smog-filled cities, like Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Beijing, have surfaced across various platforms, accompanied by headlines and captions which revelled in this concept. “The Earth is slowly healing,” CBS News wrote, while The Guardian described “nature bouncing back” in their coverage.

Alongside this, other tales of a revived natural world have been popping up, forming one of the few so-called ‘silver-linings’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. From deer grazing in a housing estate in East London, to alligators roaming shopping centres in South Carolina, and cayotes at California’s famous tourist attraction the Golden Gate Bridge – pictures, videos and testimonials have excitedly described the presence of wildlife in formerly urban and human-dominated spaces.

Indeed, it makes sense that people are excited by these kinds of stories. With the news dominated by the loss, suffering, and economic hardship the pandemic has already caused, the idea that the world is in some way being revived by humanity’s absence from it has brought with it a ray of comfort for many, who would otherwise have little positivity to hold on to.

The media helps articulate a way forward after the pandemic

In fact, reporting stories like this is extremely important, not just so that we have something to motivate us through what is undeniably one of the hardest times in most of our lifetimes, but also so that we are able to understand just how much impact humanity’s actions do and can have on the world and also to answer questions about what we want a post-pandemic world to look like.

However, there is also a very real danger that discussions around the topic of climate change and the coronavirus can border on ethically dubious territory. When we stop celebrating the temporary revival of the planet as a side-effect of lockdown measures and start celebrating the pandemic itself, a dangerous narrative evolves. This is one that tiptoes into the realms of eco-fascism, a school of thought that dictates permanent, draconian restrictions on human life in the name of environmental revival.

But some newspaper headlines are far from helpful

There are numerous examples of media platforms slipping into this kind of narrative. The Sun, for instance, published an article at the beginning of May that described the fact that “coronavirus has saved [thousands] of lives” due to drops in pollution levels, while The Guardian published a headline (quoted from a UN representative) which stated that COVID-19 was nature’s way of “sending us a message”.

Although it is tempting to want to cling onto something positive at this time, we must remember – as members of the public and as reporters – that a global pandemic cannot and should not be considered a reasonable means of solving the climate emergency. Of course, we should celebrate the environmental changes we are seeing as a by-product of lockdown measures. But we should use the experience as a way of both understanding the importance humanity plays in preserving the health of the planet and forming new, sustainable environmental policies in the future.

The media has a responsibility to ask questions which reflect real, tangible and ethical change. We need more reporting which questions and analyses how we can achieve this. Can remote working become more widespread in a post-pandemic world, for instance? Or could we be effective in building up the renewable energy sector as we make the journey back towards normality? By asking these kinds of questions, the media can play its part in calling the government to action, so that this time can be used as a means of trialling and assessing how we can bring about real, sustainable environmental legislation in the future.

‘Returning to normal’ should be about learning, and finding new and improved ways of protecting the planet — without sacrificing human life or freedom.

Luna Williams is the political correspondent for the Immigration Advice Service. The IAS is an organisation that assists private clients, as well as asylum seekers, refugees and trafficking victims. It is currently working alongside charities on a campaign to encourage the government to call an amnesty for undocumented migrants.

Your Monthly Briefing • June 2020

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

How Plan International UK used video to bring the voices of girls in crisis direct to Parliament

Video is a powerful advocacy tool and it’s been at the heart of Plan International UK’s recent Girls in Crisis campaign, as Alex Martin explains.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic was sweeping the globe, millions of girls around the world were living through crisis – due to conflict, disaster and displacement. That’s why, in March 2020, we launched Our Vision: A Call to Action by Girls in Crisis – an eight-point plan for change, co-created with girls and young women living through crisis.

Our experience shows that girls are among the worst affected by any crisis, yet their voices are often the least heard. This is despite that fact that they are the experts in their own lives and know what needs to change.

We needed to understand the change they wanted to see, so that we could bring it to life through their own voices

From the start, we saw this as a multimedia project with voice, video and photography at the heart as a key tool in our advocacy approach. We ran youth-led consultations with over 150 young people – Congolese refugees in Rwanda, South Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda and girls living in conflict-affected North East Nigeria. Each location represented a different experience of what it is like to be a girl living through crisis, whilst also sharing many commonalities. From this, together, we created a clear blueprint for change for the international community to endorse.

“It is important for governments to listen to the voice of the girls so they can resolve our issues.” Umalisa, 22, Congolese refugee in Rwanda	middle column	“I wish for the future generations to be deciding for themselves, advocating for others and having a peaceful place to live.” Sandrine, 27, Congolese refugee in Rwanda

We knew that, to be effective, this needed to be more than a written document

We wanted these inspirational young women to have the opportunity to tell their stories to leaders and decision makers themselves – to deliver this in their own words and to finally have their voices heard. Therefore, we created a video Call to Action.

Video is a powerful tool to give these young women the platform to directly share their story. But we would only have one opportunity to film with the young women in each country. It meant that consultations, policy analysis and filming were happening at the same time. We took the time to answer questions, explain the campaign and ensure all participants understand where their voices would be heard – in Rwanda, the conversation about consent took over an hour. It was brilliant to see the girls empowered to ask us some tough questions and make an informed decision as to whether to be involved. It was fast-paced and challenging but it was worth it – the result feels truly owned by the young people.

The video is a culmination of this process – each girl’s story and demand spoken directly to camera with a montage of solidarity at the end – and we are so proud of it.

It is a powerful reminder of the resilience and strength of young women and their capacity to change the world

We launched the Call to Action at an event in the UK Houses of Parliament in early March. The video took centre stage and it was so powerful to watch as screens all across the room broadcast the girls’ eight-point plan for change directly to decision makers.

Since then, the context has changed dramatically due to the corona virus pandemic. This has exacerbated the difficult living conditions for those living in humanitarian contexts such as refugee camps, where water is scarce, conditions crowded and social distancing often not an option. And we know from our experiences during the Ebola outbreak that girls face unique challenges during such crises.

We know it is more important than ever to ensure we are listening directly to girls and ensuring their voices are central to our advocacy.

That’s why we are reaching out to the girls involved in developing this Call to Action to hear about the impacts that this pandemic is having on their lives so this can be reflected in the project. Next, we will be calling on the international community to endorse this Call to Action with a focus on ensuring that the rights and needs of girls living in crises are central to world leaders’ agenda at the G7 Summit in the UK in 2021.

Watch the Call to Action video

Uganda photography by Quinn Neely and Rwanda photography by Rob Beechey – Copyright 2020

Michael Herrod at ITV News on how coronavirus has impacted foreign news coverage

For our latest online IBT briefing, we were joined by Michael Herrod, Head of Foreign News and Tom Clarke, Science Editor at ITV News. 

ITV News has a longstanding commitment to bringing international stories to a mainstream audience, covering everything from big news events and political disruption to the human impact of climate change. During the lively discussion, Michael explained how he hopes that ITV’s foreign news coverage helps to bring international stories to an audience that wouldn’t usually hear about them.

“I see our role generally as opening people’s eyes to events, countries and stories that they perhaps wouldn’t otherwise be interested in, or know about.”

We also heard from ITV News Science Editor, Tom Clarke, who offered plenty of useful insights into how they plan to approach COP26 and climate change coverage over the coming months. The climate crisis is a key focus area for ITV News, and our members from Oxfam, Islamic Relief and Tearfund were able to share their thoughts on how climate stories could fit alongside the current coronavirus coverage.

“It’s a question about how we as journalists can keep climate change on the agenda.”

It was encouraging to hear Michael explain that there is still a healthy appetite for global stories amongst their UK audience, and both Michael and Tom were able to share advice with our members on how to best pitch them stories, as well at the types of stories that their audience is most interested in.

Find out more in our ‘Meet the Editor’ interview below. Registered IBT Members can read the detailed briefing notes and watch the full briefing recording from the membership dashboard.

Watch in full: Michael Herrod, Head of Foreign News at ITV News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Briefing Notes: ITV News

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

The media are failing to tell the stories of 1 billion people

Disabled people are fast becoming the forgotten victims of this pandemic. There are an estimated 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide and yet their stories are consistently under reported by the media. We invited Vikki Furse from IBT member Humanity & Inclusion to give us her view.

Despite being “the world’s biggest minority”, people with disabilities are often forgotten and their stories are not heard. They regularly face discrimination and exclusion from water and sanitation, healthcare, education, work, and community life. Should they also face exclusion from the media? We at Humanity & Inclusion say no, we need the media to highlight this terrible inequality.

Now more than ever we can’t ignore the plight of 1 in 7 human beings who desperately need our attention and compassion. In times of crisis, like the one we are living through with Covid19, we know that people with disabilities will be disproportionately impacted and will be left behind. Although there has been some media coverage highlighting the stories of people with disabilities, too many media outlets ignore their plight. We recently received a reply from a global news outlet, saying that they could not report the story of the people we support because they do not cover disability

How can it be that any media organisation can simply decide to ignore the stories of 1 billion people?

We are hearing stories of isolation, exclusion and hopelessness from the people with disabilities we support around the world.  In a survey of 700 people with disabilities in Nepal, which we have just released, almost a third report a mental health impact, like anxiety and hopelessness and three quarters are experiencing a drop in their basic household income.

Every day we hear the stories of the people behind these statistics. Like Bimala and her son Birendra from Nepal. Birenda is 12 and has cerebral palsy. Before the lockdown we were providing him with regular physiotherapy and also making sure he was included in school, which meant that his mother was able to go to work during the day. With the lockdown, Birenda’s school has shut. His mother can’t take him to the hospital to get his treatment. She has to stay at home to take care of him and she can’t work. Because of his disability, Birenda does not understand the current pandemic and why he can’t go to school. With the lack of money, Bimala is very worried about the future of her family and how she is going to provide for them.

Birenda and Bimala’s story is one of thousands that our colleagues hear every day

But their stories should not only be heard by us, they should be heard by everyone. Everyone should know about the terrible impact Covid19 is having on so many people with disabilities. And for this we need the media to relay their stories.

Your Monthly Briefing • May 2020

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Watch in full: Katy Minshall, Head of Policy & Philanthropy at Twitter

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

What WaterAid can teach us about handwashing

IBT member, WaterAid, is one of the world’s leading experts on handwashing and hygiene promotion and the COVID-19 pandemic has given its work added urgency. Om Prasad Gautam shares his top tips on achieving the change in behaviour that is necessary if the pandemic is to be tackled successfully.

The current battle against the spread of the COVID-19 has highlighted in horrifically stark terms the fundamental importance of handwashing with soap and water in controlling the spread of infectious diseases. Three billion people across the world – and 75% of the population in the least developed countries – do not have access to somewhere to wash their hands with soap and water.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, this lack of the most basic of services together with a denial of rights to water and sanitation, led every year to tens of thousands of deaths from diarrhoeal and waterborne diseases, mostly hidden from the headlines and ignored by those with the power to change this situation.

Now in the face of a terrifying disease, everyone is having to learn quickly about putting hygiene at the heart of daily life. Currently, fear is acting as a powerful stimulus for people to drastically change their behaviour, but we know this may not last for long. Here are the key lessons that we have learnt from working in this field for almost 40 years.

1. It’s more than just soap and water

You can’t just give people soap and expect them to want to use it, know how to use it or why. If you are forced to decide between buying food or school books or soap, then just being told that soap is important is not enough to put it on the shopping list and change behaviour around washing hands.

We all know that knowledge only is not enough – otherwise we would all adhere faithfully to public health guidelines on exercise, diet, smoking etc. Key to bringing about lasting behaviour change is understanding and targeting the motives that drive people to change their habits – so they can move from knowledge to actual practice. When there is an outbreak of disease like now or during Ebola outbreaks, a motivation to change behaviour can be fear but it can be temporary stimulus.

But Ebola showed us that often behaviours adopted during a time of acute crisis do not become long term so WaterAid works with other motivations such as nurture –loving your family and wanting to protect them. Other drivers include a sense of wanting to fit in and so we work to make washing hands a social norm.

2. It has to include everyone

Gender, age, disability, ethnicity, race, religion and economic and health status all play a part in determining who will and won’t have access to the basic necessities of clean water, sanitation and handwashing facilities.

We are committed to tackling inequalities across all strata of society and our programmes always consider how everyone, especially those that are the most marginalised – can access them.

3. Go beyond your immediate sector

What’s clear is that there are strategic moments when messages and lessons around hygiene are most effectively transmitted and it is often by working in tandem with other sectors, such as health or education, that change is most successfully implemented. For example, we reached thousands of mothers with life-saving hygiene lessons in Nepal when they took their babies to be vaccinated in a government-run routine immunisation programme.

4. Schools, homes, hospitals – it has to be everywhere

Even the best designed behaviour change programme to get people to wash their hands will fail if there is nowhere to wash hands. So our work is community wide – helping to ensure that every home, school and healthcare centre has somewhere to wash hands with soap. Yet globally only around half of schools have somewhere for pupils to wash their hands with soap and water and over 40% of healthcare facilities have nowhere for doctors and nurses to wash their hands where they see patients.

5. A whole system needs to be in place

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes that focus solely on providing taps, toilets and one-off trainings are unlikely to deliver lasting outcomes. To be successful, you need a whole ecosystem in place – so you need taps that keep working because the utility company is well staffed and adequately financed, you need every teacher and every school child to receive training, you need the health centre to be able to rely on always having soap available. Otherwise, it is just not possible to keep the good habits going.

6. Support, influence and work with Governments

We have learnt that by supporting and working with governments, we can be most effective and implement at scale. This means making the case as to why investing in WASH pays dividends in terms of increased health, dignity and productivity. In the face of a global pandemic, the importance of good WASH is hard to overstate and so we are working with governments to rapidly increase the provision of handwashing facilities and also supporting mass media behaviour change campaigns.

7. Research, monitor and evaluate

Our behaviour change work is based on getting to know the community context – what matters to people, what holds back people for behaviour change, what motivates them and then monitoring over time to see if the programme has been effective. Then we evaluate and make changes as needed.

8. Use the media creatively

Most of our initial COVID-19 response has been using digital, social and mass media, in order to comply with social distancing requirements. For example, in Zambia we have worked with celebrities, athletes and artists to record hygiene promotion videos that have been posted on social media platforms. In India we launched a high profile campaign using text messaging, WhatsApp groups, community radio and local TV channels. In more normal times, we also use community-based projects like performing traditional dance and theatre in Ethiopia to pass on hygiene lessons.

Meet the expert: Twitter’s Katy Minshall on how INGOs can make best use of the platform

For our latest online IBT briefing, we were joined by Katy Minshall, Twitter’s Head of Policy and Philanthropy. 

Katy led a training session with our members, sharing best practice for how INGOs can make the most of Twitter. She noted two unique characteristics of Twitter that make it a particularly useful tool for charities: it is a platform for users to engage with public discussions, and it is fast-paced and reactive to cultural and news events.

“Twitter moves so fast, and so it’s important to be timely. If there’s a conversation that is relevant to your organisation, make sure your voice is there quickly as part of that discussion.”

Katy was able to share her top tips for how organisations can make the most of Twitter. Highlighting the importance of getting the basics right, she advised members to keep tweets concise, use only one or two hashtags, and include clear call to actions. She noted that whilst sharing videos and photos generally result in higher engagement, it is also important to be able to react quickly when relevant conversations are trending.

“It’s just as simple as considering what you like to engage with when you’re on Twitter.”

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make on Twitter, according to Katy, is to focus too heavily on posting whilst neglecting engagement. It is crucial to incorporate engagement into your social strategy if you are to make the most of the platform. Using Twitter polls, asking open ended questions, or engaging in other active conversations are good ways to do this.

Katy was then able to answer questions from IBT members, including Médecins Sans Frontières, DEC and Saferworld, who used the opportunity to ask more in depth questions about content optimisation, paid campaigns and scheduling.

Find out more in our ‘Meet the Expert’ interview below. Registered IBT Members can read the detailed briefing notes and watch the full briefing recording from the Membership Dashboard.

Briefing Notes: Twitter

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Let’s make the case for a swift, collective global response

Communicating during the COVID-19 crisis is a challenge for INGOs. Maryam Mohsin, media manager at BOND, suggests how we can find the right tone of voice in our media and public messaging.

For the first time in the living memories of many of us, the whole world is facing the same immediate threat: Covid-19. How we speak to others, the language we use and what information we trust counts now more than ever. We only need to switch on the news and listen to political leaders for five seconds to see the impact words and tone can have on relationships between people and countries.

So, how can we all get our communications right at a time when everyone’s priorities have shifted and when the UK public is being bombarded by Covid-19 related news from every direction?

I recently worked with policy and media colleagues from UK INGOs, big and small, to help flesh out appropriate words, feelings and sentiments that can help us reach our audiences with the thought and care needed.

Here are some key ideas on how to effectively communicate during this crisis.

Empathy, solidarity and hope need to be the cornerstones of communications right now

As development and humanitarian communications professionals, at times working in some of the most challenging contexts, we know this all too well. There have sadly been too many moments when I have spoken to people at their rawest, and in moments when they have needed to get their story out in the hope of making something change. Right now, these are the same conversations I am having with family, friends and colleagues, as well as people working in countries around the world.

Showing sensitivity to what’s happening in the UK is crucial, especially when we know we haven’t seen the worst of this crisis yet. Many UK INGOs are showing solidarity by reconfiguring their services to the UK to help take the pressure off frontline services. Others are volunteering to help get food to people most at risk.

But we can also do this through the words we use. Everyone can see frontline workers putting their lives at risk for us and we all want the people we care about to get through this.

Let’s praise the heroes in societies around the world and recognise that everyone’s fears, worries and tragedies are equally valid

There’s no “I” in “us.”

Like many of us in the sector, I find it hard to let go of the idea that charities help others because it’s the right thing – not because of what we’re set to gain. Covid-19 puts the whole of humanity in the same boat. Right now, we need to make the case for a swift, collective global response whenever we get the opportunity.

We need to emphasise that the world is only as strong as its weakest health care link. This message will help us hit home the reality that if we don’t act now to help people everywhere, we risk losing lives and will struggle to return to normality anytime soon. There is currently no cure for Covid-19, which is why talking about the global nature of this crisis and the need for a global, unified response is critical. Because it is the truth.

Remember the importance of using language that reflects hope, backed up by facts. We are seeing countries help one another emerge from the other side. Serious conversations about debt relief for poorer countries are happening. Let’s also remember how far we have come in eradicating polio, malaria, smallpox and nearly ebola. The world has people with the expertise to help countries pull through this.

Demonstrate why INGOs are now more important than ever

Why are INGOs so important to tackling the Covid-19 crisis? Because we will ensure nobody is left behind.

This is what the third sector does best, both here in the UK and globally. We reach people who are hardest to reach. We are the relentless voice in political ears that flags problems and solutions, and are quick to point out the gaps in funding or programming that leave the vulnerable behind. We make sure leaders do what they say they are going to do, and are transparent and accountable. We deliver on the ground through communities and local partners.

We do this life-saving work by helping the people hardest hit to tell their own stories. In your communications, talk about the people you support and their needs in this crisis. Talk about who you are, what you do and how your INGO can help us get on the front foot of this crisis, especially to your existing supporters, the wider public, policy makers and political leaders. If ever there was a time to support the third sector in all the shapes and sizes it comes in – this is it.

Briefing Notes: Devex

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.

Meet the editor: Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Belinda Goldsmith on how NGOs should pitch stories

For our first online IBT briefing, we welcomed Belinda Goldsmith, Editor-in-Chief at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

The Thomson Reuters Foundation aims to cover the world’s under reported stories across a range of issues including aid, development, women’s and LGBT+ rights and climate change.

“TRF is completely unique because all of our stories go out on the Reuters news wire. So we’ve got that global reach and reputation of Reuters which is something you cannot buy.”

During the session, Belinda explained how TRF works, including their relationship with the Reuters news wire, and shared details of the types of stories they look for. She highlighted that they have a priority on original journalism and breaking new stories, and that they are keen to know what the latest trends are and to make their reporting forward looking.

“We find the best stories are always human led stories.”

She also shared her tips for NGOs hoping to pitch her stories. Explaining that the focus of much of their reporting is the impact of issues on ordinary people and vulnerable communities, so it is important to always think about the human angle when pitching to them.

Belinda was then able to answer questions from IBT members, including Save the Children, Saferworld and Islamic Relief, who had an opportunity to pitch their ideas and understand more about TRF’s global audience.

Find out more in our ‘Meet the Editor’ interview below. Registered IBT Members can read the detailed briefing notes and watch the full briefing recording from the Membership Dashboard.

Your Monthly Briefing • April 2020

Sorry, this content is only accessible to registered members.
Register to become a member or existing members can login here.