Collaborative Change Communication:
A Capacity Building Partnership

Bridging North and South Knowledge Institutions across Communication for Climate Change & Food Security

The increasing demand for information and knowledge sharing, to engage stakeholders, puts the need for planned communication at the centre of any development initiative. This becomes even more urgent in the agricultural and rural development sectors, currently confronted by climate change and global food crises.

The need for sound capacities in Communication for Development (ComDev) to handle communication strategies, methods and tools across the global North and South is now widely recognized.  The Collaborative Change Communication (CCC) partnership has been established as part of a capacity building effort initiated by FAO’s Communication for Sustainable Development Initiative(CSDI) in response to the need to improve capacities of communication practitioners and development workers in ComDev. The CCC partnership strives to strengthen capacity building between universities, research centres and communication networks around the globe with a key focus on sustainable natural resource management, climate change adaptation, and food security.

ComDev is a communication approach that combines participatory methods with a variety of media and tools, ranging from rural radio to community-specific information and communication technologies. The CCC partners believe ComDev can play a critical role in helping to address compelling development challenges such as climate change, extreme weather events, natural disasters and soaring food prices. There is a gap between global information systems and cutting-edge science on one side, and traditional local knowledge on the other; focusing on the knowledge and information needs of rural stakeholders, including both rural institutions and vulnerable groups, ComDev helps bridge this ‘glocal information divide’.

 
In a strategic vision, the CCC partnership has been designed to set the ground for a growing community of practice across regional and institutional borders. The partnership is driven by the following purposes:

• To enhance capacities and coordinate efforts in ComDev, particularly with a focus on climate change adaptation, natural resource management, and food security, to build up a critical mass of experienced practitioners within each region
• To improve access and sharing of knowledge, as well as learning opportunities in ComDev approaches and methods
• To foster partnerships and collaborations among universities, institutions, knowledge generators and other relevant stakeholders, in both developed and developing countries.

The Collaborative Change Communication partners include:

• Ørecomm: Consortium for Communication and Glocal Change, Roskilde University (RUC) and Malmö University (MU): Denmark, Sweden and International
• College of Development Communication (CDC) University of Los Baños, The Philippines
• Institut Facultaire des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication (IFASIC), Democratic Republic of Congo
• Instituto Nacional de Innovacion Agropecuaria y Forestal (INIAF), Bolivia
• Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), Jamaica
• Environment & Sustainable Development Unit (ESDU) American University of Beirut (UAB), Lebanon
• The Communication Initiative Network (CI), International

For a short description of the above institutions see enclosed page (pdf).

For more information about the CCC initiative please contact Marzia Pafumi at FAO: marzia.pafumi@fao.org