PE-DEV Toolkit / Trousse à outils de MP-DEV/part1/Basic Guidelines

NOTE: PDF GUIDELINES FOR EACH SECTION TO COME

1- Planning stage: how to prepare and plan your initiates

Well-planned and executed events, activities or engagement campaigns is a good way to interest Canadians in international development issues and humanitarian aid.

Take the time to plan carefully—some of the most important considerations are:

• Know your target audience. Based on that information, identify relevant objectives and what strategic and consistent messages will have meaning and importance for them.
• Plan for what level(s) of the continuum you are targeting.
  • Do you aim to raise awareness, deepen understand or encourage concrete actions?
  • Are you focusing on a level or levels likely to appeal to your audience?
  • Canadians can learn about and support Canada’s efforts to reduce poverty without becoming actively involved. Other Canadians may be ready to go a step further by commenting on or sharing a food security blog post, attending a conference on sustainable development goals, or volunteering to work for an organization.
• Research peer organizations involved in international development and humanitarian aid. Are there opportunities to work together and maximize the reach of public engagement activities?
• Consider using virtual alternatives to your activities and initiatives, especially to reach new audiences. Also consider promoting your events and initiatives on online platforms.
• Think about what success looks like for your activity(ies) and how will you know when you have achieved it. Planning good qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods is important to ensure that you are meeting your objectives and managing your budget efficiently. Once your activity if over, take the time to reflect on successes and areas for improvement. Note lessons learned that may guide you in the future.

2- Best practices to consider

Take a look at this non-extensive list of tips and best practices to consider when planning engagement initiatives.

Use third parties to expand reach

•Use trusted individuals that are trusted by diverse Canadians and can become “multipliers”. They can be champions, social media influencers, VIPs, teachers, student leaders, etc. They can help overcome barriers through implied third-party endorsement.

•Employ partnerships that can be multi-sectoral (i.e. with other sectors, different Federal Departments or levels of government, or with educational and cultural institutions).

Note: The principle of “Each one teaches one” builds on the principle that it is everyone’s duty to teach someone else.

Reach beyond the “usual suspects”

•Raise awareness and increasing knowledge with those who are not yet or poorly aware by reaching beyond the already existing networks of global citizens within the international assistance community.

•Diversify reach to include Indigenous peoples and other minority communities.

•Reducing barriers to participation will increase diversity and numbers of participants. These include financial, geographic, cultural, physical (accessibility), language barriers.

•Engagement  strategies cannot use generic cookie-cutter approaches when trying to reach different demographics.

Employ digital tools

·Use tools such as social media channels, virtual meeting technologies, webcasting, podcasting that help overcome barriers to participation such as geographic, financial, availability.

·In addition, consider digital gamification. Applying a gaming approach to facilitate learning has demonstrated its effectiveness with youth audiences.

Connect local issues to global issues

•Leverage Canadians’ view of global responsibility and humanity.

•Use examples from challenges affecting both domestic and global communities (such as the Covid-19 pandemic) to demonstrate how global issues have an impact at the local level (safety, wellbeing).

Note: Fostering emotions rooted in notions of shared responsibility and global citizenship can be a strategy to consider.

Foster peer recognition

•Participation will be greater if learners are recognized by their peers and their achievements validated.

•Engagement initiatives need to be designed and promoted so that its value to learners (and potential recognition by peers) are obvious.

Evaluate outcomes

·Using support from College and University programs as well as alumni networks are ways of garnering visibility and follow engagement results.

·At the moment, the government of Canada is using the following ultimate outcome for engagement initiatives: “Canadians are expected to take action in their own ways and as a result, become global citizens”.

Note: For more on this topic, check the section “Evaluation and measurement”.

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