To set common objectives, ensure ownership and dissemination
Com4Dev bases all its actions on strategic approaches developed jointly with stakeholders. It also provides this service to third parties for project formulation. The co-construction of strategies covers both long-term objectives and the expected results and processes for achieving them. Such an approach helps to define trajectories of change and better coordination of partners throughout the project.
These trajectories include pause-and-reflection stages that enable us to take stock of the progress made, the effects of actions and the driving forces behind the changes engendered. By feeding into the monitoring-evaluation and intermediate learning processes, they help to manage the project by involving all stakeholders in decisions to adjust the action in order to pursue objectives more effectively. These stages are also crucial to the capitalization and formation of shared knowledge, which contributes to the multiplication and dissemination of results.
Identification of the project’s issues and challenges, and the needs of the partner(s). Identification of stakeholders, their characteristics, interactions and interests. Analysis and understanding of the specific general context (cultural, social, environmental, economic, territorial…) in which the identified issues arise.
If strategy co-construction is essential to project definition and formulation, it is also crucial to the continuity of action, both for Com4Dev and for its partners and project stakeholders.
Fueled by project results and their capitalization in the form of poolable knowledge, cooperation strategies highlight the impact of the various actions undertaken by Com4Dev and its partners, particularly in the context of their networks.
In this way, it is part of an ongoing process of reflection that is shared with all the players involved, including donors, in the pursuit of long-term, systemic social and environmental objectives to which the various projects contribute.
These strategies form learning loops that fuel reflection, analysis and dialogue, and reinforce the relevance of projects. They also contribute to the visibility of results, their appropriation by a variety of players, including those external to the projects, and recognition of the legitimacy of the changes to which the various stakeholders have committed themselves.
In this, they are in line with the Communication for Development (C4D) and Knowledge Management approaches, the methodological foundations of Com4Dev, which are based on sharing actions that take into account local contexts and knowledge.
Cooperative organizations, eager to take action, tend to favor a tool-based approach: “How about a website? However, it’s generally a good idea – and in fact essential – to think about communication as a whole before defining one tool or another, and thus avoid embarking on potentially time- and resource-consuming projects that run the risk of ending in deadlock because the tools aren’t connected.
A development communication and knowledge management strategy is built on what already exists, and requires :
The communication strategy for development and knowledge management must be drawn up at the same time as the overall strategy for the organization/projects.
