Communicating for Change: Getting Voice, Visibility and Impact for Gender Equality

Partnership is central to this initiative. IPS is collaborating on customised media and communication plans with the 44 other organisations that are receiving support from the MDG3 Fund set up by the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation Bert Koenders. IPS is co-hosting a series of six media seminars throughout 2009 and 2010 in Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, to help journalists, editors, and civil society campaigners get the skills to communicate effectively about gender. For example, on May 25 2009, IPS Africa hosted an event at the Wits Business School in Johannesburg, South Africa, with guests including journalists, newspaper editors, TV and radio producers, ambassadors, academics, and gender experts. Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Southern Africa AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS), and other grantee organisations were among the keynote speakers at the event. The public event featured a launch of IPS Gender Wire ("IPS wants to redress a huge imbalance that exists today: only 22% of the voices you hear and read in the news today are women's. Elections, health, education, armed conflicts, corruption, laws, trade, climate change, the global financial and food crises, and natural disasters. IPS covers these frontline issues asking an often forgotten question: what does it mean for women and girls?"). The launch event was followed by a 4-day MDG3 seminar for journalists, editors, and civil society groups in Randburg, Johannesburg, and then a field trip to Helen Joseph Hospital and the Channel Africa radio studios.

The Communicating for Change website documents the publications, meetings, and outputs resulting from the initiative, and provides a knowledge centre about the activities of other women's organisations working for gender equality. An interactive Google map features active women's networks and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), many of them working in partnership with IPS, and gives all the MDG3 Fund grantees a chance to tell their own stories. One may also access "Gender Masala", the gender blog from IPS, and the independent IPS news reporting generated by Women in the News. In addition, selections from the catalogue of IPS media training publications related to gender, including the Gender Glossaries, will be revised, republished, and distributed.

In July 2009, IPS published the first issue of the MDG3 global newsletter reporting the work done by IPS internationally and regionally in the first months of the project. The newsletter, which will be published quarterly, also includes activities IPS is working on in co-operation with MDG3 grantee organisations and others committed to women's empowerment. A printed version of the MDG3 newsletter will be sent quarterly to a targeted list of key gender organisations and experts.

Gender, Women, Rights.