We are increasingly being asked by the international development community to recommend communication consultants to organisations working on development issues. Just in the past week a major bilateral, a UNICEF country office and the regional office of an NGO have requested such suggestions. A proper response is beyond our present capacity. However, we
would like to build a central information base that enabled such organisations to easily search for and review potential consultants.
We will therefore being moving ahead on the following basis and are most keen to include you, should you wish, in this process.
1. We will add a Communication Consultants section to The Communication Initiative web site - http://www.comminit.com
2. Within the internal search engine [click on SEARCH on the home page] we will add a consultants button. As well as seeking information on programmes, impact data, communication trends and development issues, users
of the search engine will also be able to search for consultants on those issues.
3. We will feature the existence of the consultants section of the web site in at least one issue of The Drum Beat and the Featured section on the site.
As background information:
For the months of April, May, June in 1999 the web site average use per month was 290,000 hits from 13,000 user sessions at 8,000 distinct hosts in 100 countries.
The Drum Beat and The Media Beat go to a network database of 3,000 people and organisations active in communication and international development. Many people forward these e-magasines to their own internal networks and listservers, leading to a much larger audience.
This August we will be remodeling the web site. One of the changes will be the inclusion of the consultants section. If you wish to be included please forward the following to me at wfeek@coastnet.com - preferably by August 19th so that we have sufficient "mass" when this section of the site is
included.
1. A one page summary of your work, consultancy interests, relevant experiences and any other priority information that you want to convey to potential contractors. I leave the style and content to you. We do not want to lay down any particular structure for the presentation of this
information. The only restriction will be the one page length. It is best if this summary is done in a Word document or equivelant software. For consultancy organisations, please interpret this as one page on the
organisation and additional one page descriptions for each of the consultants in the organisation.
2. Please include your contact information, most particularly email address and the URL for your web site if you have one.
3. Please look at the SEARCH page on The Communication Initiative web site. From those lists please select the words and/or phrases that best describe your interests, experience and possibly areas in which you would like to
work. Using those exact phrases please put them in a box at the bottom of your one page description, joining them with a comma. For example:
Latin America, East and Southern Africa, Radio, Television, Community Action, Children, Women, HIV/AIDS, Education
Please include as many categories as you wish. If one of your interests or experiences is not sufficiently covered by any of these please, in a separate box, write the word or very brief phrase that describes it. We will do our best to include those codes, but can not make any promises.
These phrases are vital for the coding process that guides the search engine. [NB This material can be additional to the one page length mentioned above.]
This note is going to about 100 consultants and consultancy organisations. I am sure that this is by no means everyone involved in this work. Please feel free to forward this note to relevant people and organisations that you think might welcome this opportunity.
If you have any queries please drop me an email. We look forward to being able to support you in your work.
With many best wishes.
Warren Feek
Director
The Communication Initiative
wfeek@coastnet.com
http://www.comminit.com
ph 1-250-658-6372
fx 1-250-658-1728
THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE Partnership - Rockefeller Foundation, UNICEF, USAID, WHO, BBC World Service, CIDA, Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs, The European Union, Soul City, The Panos Institute, UNAIDS.
Information and dialogue on communication, development and change.
