Strategic Communication
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been playing a multi-faceted role in bringing about social betterment. In seeking to secure society’s wellbeing, these organisations have also recognised the need for evolving development-centric thinking. Towards this end, they have been rendering their creative and significant contributions. It thus, becomes crucial that these entities bring out their own stories before the wider society so that their reach is widened, more people get connected and that collective contributions are enhanced.
Whilst traversing the journey of these Civil Society Organisations from the historical to the present era, we find that they have effectively addressed vast and multi-dimensional aspects of wider social good. Still, however, the wider society perceives them merely as project implementers and that their image gets limited to that of service providers across certain schemes. As a result, either their work remains ineffective, or the society does not get the worthy picture of the impact of what they do.
A study conducted by ‘Vikas Samvad’ informs that these Civil Society Organisations have been unable to make an effective use of communication channels as the other social organs – like, the government agencies, legislature or the corporates – have been able to do. Hence, despite their creative contributions and significant potentials, these CSOs have not been able to gain their acceptance across the wider society. On the contrary, there are quite some myths associated with the working of these organisations and that insinuations pertaining to the buildup of their negative image are on the rise.
Narratives have a catalysing role in bringing about social change. Likewise, storytelling has a key role in creating the influencing narratives. Information revolution and technical advancements have made the task of story writing as well as storytelling a lot easier. Now, we can advance the reach of our own stories. In this backdrop, it is critical that the CSOs expand the realm of their dialogue so that they receive superior identity, their arena of work is enlarged, and that the build-up of creative, real and sustainable narratives is facilitated. This necessitates that the organisations are endowed with distinct and effective communications strategy with functional capability to imbibe the same in their outlook.
Vikas Samvad has been working on ‘Strategic Communication Capacity Building’ for the civil society organisations for a long time. It has developed specific learning modules on the same. The initiative has benefited as many as 250 participants from about 125 organisations. The participants have acquired need-based learnings pertaining to a set of skills including story writing, use of social media, and public speaking. Alongside, as many as 150 stories have also been developed.
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