Advocacy Through Targeted Dissemination: The Knowledge Partnership (KPP) Approach

    31. August 2015 von Communication & Dissemination Expert Shilpi Jain

    An initiative to explore and showcase India's success in meeting development challenges in terms of policy and practice, the "Knowledge Sharing" approach through the Knowledge Partnership Programme aims at gathering and uptake of evidence on issues central to India's impact on global poverty and promote sharing of Indian evidence, best practice and expertise with Low Income Countries in order to facilitate evidence-gathering and uptake.

    Introduction

    The KPP is designed and implemented by IPE Global Pvt. Ltd on behalf of the Government of UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), aims to produce and disseminate high quality research and analysis products that impact development outcomes and support advocacy towards strengthening policy design and implementation.

    The programme has prioritized the following areas for engagement: a) Food security, resource scarcity and climate change; b) Trade and investment; c) Health and disease control; d) Women and girls; e) Development effectiveness. The aim is to step up collaboration around ideas, knowledge, evidence, accountability, technology and innovation between UK, India and the developing countries of Sub Saharan Africa and South East Asia.   

    Challenges

    The programme is largely about possible uptake of successful policies, programs and practices from India by other developing countries in the spirit of South-South Cooperation.

    One of the first pre-requisites of this is to identify demand from other countries. In absence of that, the other option is to stimulate demand. The use of digital means supported by workshops and other events offers a low cost option for this.
    Sharing information and knowledge forms the first step of knowledge based advocacy. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

    Research dissemination and uptake problems have been particularly well described since long. To the continuing surprise of many, often the best research work remains unused for long by practioners and policy decision makers. Thus, despite the volumes of research evidence available, relatively little was disseminated and taken up or applied in practice. 

    • Technical and Infrastructural barriers prevented access to information to the users. For instance, lack of web presence meant we were missing the chance to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week — essentially for free!
    • Lack of knowledge tools which could facilitate maintenance of the information-rich content repository present under the KPP
    • Knowledge Transfer was more linear. Often the information was seen to flow from the information provider via the chosen media to the information user without accounting for ’Who is it meant for?’  and ‘What is the objective?’
    • Information Tracking is not available for the providers to be able to gauge the information flow to the right people at the right time especially within the Global South for an increased south-south cooperation.

    Steps Taken

    Communication strategy frame based on KPP Advocacy and Communication Initiative (KACI) was developed as given below.

    The KACI Model

    Under this model work done includes efforts at widespread dissemination and outreach through various means such as creation of knowledge products (KPs), Website development and daily update, stakeholder database development, mass mailing, enewsletter, paper presentations at different forums, organizing roundtables, video documentation, media interaction, etc.

    The Why?

    Critical knowledge needs and issues must be identified to support advocacy. However, it was important to note that: 

    • Knowledge is not exclusively conveyed through documents and reports. Discussions on important topics among practitioners who have relevant knowledge and experience are a key part of knowledge management. Time must be set aside for this practice. These discussions can be in person, online, or through email, as well as a variety of other fora. In addition, communication and knowledge management should be mutually supportive. Communication skills are essential to be better able to package knowledge in a manner that is useful to users.
    • Better collaboration on knowledge generation and access among various levels of stakeholders is fundamental. Collaboration with established knowledge management centres is also necessary to facilitate sharing and accessibility of advocacy measures.
    • Systematic knowledge generation and sharing helps uptake by practitioners and results in a more efficient use of scarce resources.
    • Enables south-south learning and cooperation to address challenges of socio-economic development.

    How was it successful?

    • Collaboration: KPP has collaborated with 54 partners, which include NGOs under the WNTA network, Donors and Government Bodies such as DFID Nepal & Ethiopia; Ministry of Women Children & Youth Affairs; National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW), Government of India; Kudumbashree, Government of Kerala; Ministry of Women Children and Social Welfare (MOWCSW), Nepal.
    • Partnerships: 16 active partners for ongoing KPP Projects (Such as CII, FICCI, ICRIER, ICTSD, IIFT, RIS, ORF, IISD, IDS, FAO, UNDP, WNTA, CPR, CGD, CDE, HLFPPT, PHFI, ICRW, CMS, IMS, etc.)
    • Meetings: One on one meetings with the officials and government officials
    • Workshops/Seminars: Workshops and seminars specific to the work streams organized
    • Web Presence: KPP Website developed with an average of 2500 page views per month
    • Database Creation: Electronic database of stakeholders created for greater outreach at minimal costs for the entire programme to facilitate programme dissemination and segmented mailing.
    • eDissemination: eNewsletters and eCalendars created and shared with among databases
    • Monitoring: Web Traffic and eMailer AnalyticTracking monitored to estimate the global programme reach

    What were the challenges and how were they overcome?

     

    Information Users

    • What information do they need?
    • What is the most appropriate way to reach out to them?
    • Creation of KPP database with  segmented database for every work stream
    • eNewsletters/Events update shared periodically with the database

    Information Source

    • Do the users perceive the source to be trustworthy?

    Web presence was strengthened with new features like Media, Informatics Events Calendar

    Information Content

    • Is the content clear to the users and is it simple to understand?
    •  Colour theme branding was done for each of the work streams
    • Simple 2-4 page flyers and brochures created and shared among users

    Information Medium

    • Is there information medium which can be easily accessed by the user?
    • Based on the User Geo information shared- either through one-on-meetings, seminars, discussions or through massmailing

    The Results

    The results varied vis-à-vis the mode of dissemination (See below)

    Electronic

    A.    KPP Website www.ipekpp.com:  Average monthly page views of 2,500 and user count approx. 5,000
    B.    KPP Web Content: - An average of 20 information pieces being added on the KPP website month on month
    C.    New Site Features: Media Gallery, Informatics, Calendar, Achievements
    D.    Online Mailing Platforms: Creation of stakeholder database; Massmailing and tracking of information shared with the database
    E.    Presence on Other External Online Platforms:

    • Eldis: A global database on international development that aims to share the best knowledge on development, policy, practice and research on areas like Agriculture, Food, Climate Change, Gender, Global Health, Nutrition and so on, Eldis is funded by the Government of UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). With KPP presence on the Eldis platform since Feb 2015, over 75 KPP documents have been made available via this platform. KPP even featured in the Spotlight series on the Eldis platform in June 2015.
    • India Environment Portal (IEP): Portal initiated and managed by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and promoted by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), Government of India. IEP has featured over five KPP studies since June 2015.
    • One world South Asia
    • CIIE wordpress
    • IRENA website
    • BGMEA website
    • Building Advisory Service & Information Network (BASIN)
    • German Embassy, Lilongwe, Malawi
    • CCODE

    Other Modes (Seminars/Meetings/Workshops etc)

    • One on one meeting with government officials, ambassadors and officials from within various African countries
    • Participation in various Indo Africa events 
    • Exclusive Knowledge Partner for CII organized Indo Africa Health Forum in April 2015
    • Consultations, round tables and discussions with stakeholders either self-organized or facilitated through the partners

    Conclusion

    With advocacy at the core at KPP, it is a continuous and adaptive process of gathering, organising and formulating information and data on various subjects which is then communicated by targeted stakeholders to policy-makers through various interpersonal and mass media communication channels. Through advocacy, KPP can inform and influence policy-makers, country leaders and other development players to create an enabling environment for mutual learning and sharing of experiences.

    The initiative offered value for money through:

    • Wider participation and ownership
    • Learning Dissemination across various stakeholders
    • Influencing Policies to raise resources and political and social leadership’s commitment for the programme goals
    • Sharing of Success to a wider audience

     

    Conclusion

    With advocacy at the core at KPP, it is a continuous and adaptive process of gathering, organising and formulating information and data on various subjects which is then communicated by targeted stakeholders to policy-makers through various interpersonal and mass media communication channels. Through advocacy, KPP can inform and influence policy-makers, country leaders and other development players to create an enabling environment for mutual learning and sharing of experiences.

    The initiative offered value for money through:

    • Wider participation and ownership
    • Learning Dissemination across various stakeholders
    • Influencing Policies to raise resources and political and social leadership’s commitment for the programme goals
    • Sharing of Success to a wider audience

    This initiative is about knowledge management and open access. It is about using available low cost communication channels for promoting south-south cooperation. Since 2015 is the year of dissemination of KPP, this effort has more than adequately met the objectives. It has led to more people being aware about issues and solutions in India, a foundation step in promoting south-south learning and cooperation. 

    This initiative has helped capture and share the diversity work undertaken by the Knowledge Partnership Programme. For the team just doing the work is not enough. The team invests time in disseminating about their work to maximize on the outcomes way beyond the ‘project area’. The website is updated on an almost daily basis. It provides a platform for all on how to manage and share information and knowledge, taking advantage of the various platforms and options that are available.

    Bibliographic Details

    • Shilpi Jain, Dr Indira Khurana, Shilpi Jain: ‘Knowledge Partnership Programme’ 2014 [Online] Available www.ipekpp.com; Co-authors of book on water titled ‘Reflections on Managing WATER: Earth’s Greatest Natural Resource
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