Evaluating C4D Resource Hub: Launch at the Social and Behaviour Change Summit
On April 16 over a thousand communication for development (C4D) researchers and practitioners descend on Indonesia for the Social and Behaviour Change Summit (SBCC).
Among them will be members of the Evaluating C4D research team: Professor Jo Tacchi (Loughborough University), Dr Jessica Noske-Turner (University of Leicester), Dr Linje Manyozo (RMIT University), and Rafael Obregon and Ketan Chitnis (UNICEF C4D). Together we will launch the new Evaluating C4D Resource Hub.
The C4D Hub is designed to help practitioners make informed choices about approaches and tools for research, monitoring and evaluation (R,M&E) that are consistent with the values and needs of Communication for Development (C4D). An online resource, housed on BetterEvaluation.org, it contains a growing collection of the best available guides, toolkits, tools and methods for R,M&E of C4D initiatives.
Communication for Development (also referred to as Development Communication and Communication for Social Change) is an interdisciplinary field of research and practice that focuses on engagement and dialogue, using range of media and methods (for example, video, radio, community dialogue meetings, extension workers, entertainment education). C4D seeks to generate meaningful social change through listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skills, debating and learning, with a goal of enhancing positive social change.
The C4D Hub was developed through a three-year research collaboration with UNICEF C4D that aimed to bridge the divide between adaptive and participatory evaluation approaches, and the more dominant accountability-driven, results-based approaches. The principles underpinning C4D value participation, inclusion and local knowledge. C4D often encompasses intangible and interconnected social changes, that are difficult to predict and are ideally community driven. The C4D Hub is designed to encourage R,M&E that reinforces C4D principles and encompasses the complexities of social change.
The C4D Hub combines the Rainbow Framework with the C4D Evaluation Framework. The Rainbow Framework is well known to users of BetterEvaluation.org as a structure for the main tasks associated with evaluation. The C4D Evaluation Framework is sets out the core components and principles of C4D (Lennie and Tacchi, 2013).
Navigating with and through both C4D principles and evaluation tasks, users are able to make informed choices about the available tools and approaches that they will use in their C4D R,M&E. More than a ‘guide to the guides’, the C4D Hub brings attention to the purposes, strengths and usefulness of different approaches and the implications of every choice made in designing C4D R,M&E.
Jo, Jessica and Linje will be giving demonstrations of and rapid training for using the Evaluating C4D Resource Hub at the SBCC Summit in Nusa Dua, Indonesia throughout the week. We will also be collecting additional resources to add to the C4D Hub. If you are attending the Summit, please do drop by Booth 48 and say hello.
Further information:
The Evaluating C4D Resource Hub is an outcome of the Evaluating Communication for Development: supporting adaptive and accountable development project (2014-2017, LP130100176) with funding from the Australian Research Council, UNICEF and the Eidos Institute. The project partners include: RMIT University, UNESCO Chair for Community Media/University of Hyderabad, UNICEF Communication for Development, Eidos Institute (2014-2016), and the project is continued by Loughborough University, and the University of Leicester. The lead investigators are: Professor Jo Tacchi, Professor Patricia Rogers, Professor Vinod Pavarala, Dr Linje Manyozo, Dr Rafael Obregon, and Bruce Muirhead; with Dr Jessica Noske-Turner as the postdoctoral researcher and Ho Anh Tung and Jharna Brahma as research assistants.
For more on the C4D Evaluation Framework see: Lennie & Tacchi (2013). Evaluating Communication for Development: A framework for social change. Earthscan/Routledge.