Mondo activities September-December 2016

SEPTEMBER

After the study trip to Uganda, a very interesting and relevant roundtable on SDG implementation was awaiting in Bratislava. Estonia was represented by Sigrid Solnik from the Estonian Roundtable for Development Cooperation, Kaili Terras from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Eili Lepik from the Government Office. All three took part of panel discussions and Ms Lepik also presented on the SDG implementation in Estonia. The roundtable was fruitful and a lot of great connections made. The steering group meeting after the roundtable was also great, with thorough discussions between the partners.

Parallel to the roundtable, Anette Parksepp was in Nepal as a part of a study trip arranged by VIKES. She is also one of the young journalists who participated in the spring training. Although there was difficulties for her to do her work because she was the only TV journalist, she still said in a later meeting that it was an incredible experience for her and great preparation for future work.

Her first clip also aired on TV news in September: http://uudised.err.ee/v/valismaa/04392847-af1b-42c7-b37b-33e83c51d941/nepali-maavarinas-kannatanud-pole-siiani-raha-ega-uusi-maju-saanud

Another activity in September was compiling this years’ newspaper insert. The topic of the insert this year was women’s rights across the globe and it introduced topic such as rights to education, political participation and entrepreneurial skills to a wider audience. The insert was published on the 17^th of October between Eesti Päevaleht with a circulation of 17,330.

In September and October we had post-trip meetings with Piia Osula (Puuraid), Anette Parksepp, Laura Toomlaid, Madle Timm, and Rait Roop; also a pre-trip meeting with Jaanus Piirsalu and Raigo Pajula.

Some of their articles/clips from that time:

• http://uudised.err.ee/v/valismaa/0427e190-6eaa-4c71-9cd5-8eaf7aec57c8/err-nepalis-mullune-maavarin-on-jatnud-inimestele-tugevaid-tervisekahjustusi
• http://reisijuht.delfi.ee/news/reisijutud/tuhkatriinulood-kampala-slummidest?id=75910951
• http://pluss.postimees.ee/3889887/aralsk-ootab-koju-oma-sadat-kalalaeva

OCTOBER

In October, two screening events were also held. One was a screening for school and university students on the 17^th of October, the film being “Sonita” – a documentary about an Afghan refugee in Iran who wants to become a rapper, but her mother wants to marry her off.  In the end of the film, the director decides to secretly buy Sonita flight tickets to the USA where she could continue her studies. We invited four filmmakers for a discussion after the film to talk about the role of the documentary maker – if they can be activists also, or should they avoid influencing their’ subjects’ lives. Riho Västrik, a filmmaker and journalist moderated the conversation; other participants were filmmakers Marje Jurtšenko, Peeter Vihma, and Marianna Kaat. Although the students were rather shy and did not dare to ask too many questions from the panellists, the teachers in the audience immediately had interest in renting the film to show in their school for a larger audience.

Screening of "Sonita" and discussion with documentary makers in the
Baltic Film and Media School (Tallinn University).

The second screening on the 31^st of October was a public premiere for the M4D documentaries made by ERR’s journalists. The two films shown at the screening were Meelis Süld’s and Kalle Käesel’s “Eesti küla Ghanas” and Kristo Elias’ and Mihkel Ulk’s “Turu majandus”. Anna Gavronski (author of “Sädemete jõed”) moderated the evening and a discussion with the audience was also held. Around 50 people attended. See the photo gallery of the event here: http://etv.err.ee/v/dokumentaalfilmid/meie_maailm/uudised/96df0a6e-4eba-46ee-98af-624f012c255d/galerii-dokumentaalsarja-meie-maailm-eellinastus

In October we also had the chance of giving M4D handicraft baskets to policy makers and experts who took part of the “Women in Politics” international seminar in October. The seminar aimed at looking at women’s political involvement on a global level and how we could support the political aspirations of women in developing countries.

Panelists and participants who received gift baskets: moderator Kadi Viik (Expert on Equal Treatment at the Estonian Human Rights Centre),  Helen Biin (Labour & Social Policy Analyst at Praxis, Estonian Socio-Economic Research Centre), Maryan Abdulkarim (Founding member of the new feminist party in Finland), Hanna Rummelhoff (Member of JURK, organization specializing in providing legal aid to women in Norway), Eva Biaudet (Finnish MP, Chairperson of Political Parties of Finland for Democracy – Demo Finland), Birgitta Ohlsson (Swedish MP, former Minister of EU Affairs), Alexandra Rosén (Senior Director, The Women in Parliaments Global Forum), Daniel E. Schaer (Estonian Ambassador to Macedonia), Keit Pentus-Rosimannus (Estonian MP, Foreign Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu), Birgit Keerd-Leppik (Advisor at the the Estonian Parliament's Commission of Foreign Affairs).

Panelists receiving their gift baskets. From right: moderator Kadi Viik (Expert on Equal Treatment at the Estonian Human Rights Centre),  Helen Biin (Labour & Social Policy Analyst at Praxis, Estonian Socio-Economic Research Centre), Maryan Abdulkarim (Founding member of the new feminist party in Finland), Hanna Rummelhoff (Member of JURK, organization specializing in providing legal aid to women in Norway).

NOVEMBER

In November Johanna took part of the group trip arranged by VIKES to Red Nose Day in Finland. Lot of great insight and contacts were made and hopefully the TV producers and journalists who participated will be able to use them in their future projects.

We also produced a new type of publication – namely wall posters on SDGs. The posters were developed to reflect real-life situations of the Sustainable Development Goals. Each poster had a photo and a short introduction about the SDG. An interactive element was added with a QR-code square that leads the audience to an online quiz in the global education portal Maailmakool.ee. The poster sets will be distributed to schools to inform young people about the SDGs and encourage them to make their own contribution to the achievement of these goals.

Wall posters on SDGs for schools – each goal is explained with a picture,
a story and a QR-code that leads to a relevant online exercise. 

A meeting-brainstorm in Mondo was arranged to plan future advocacy activities for the year 2017 in M4D project. On the 23^rd of November, an advocacy mapping exercise was done and possible future activities brainstormed. An activity strategy will be based on this meeting. Related to this, we started preparing a thank-you note for policy makers and politicians who have been active in development cooperation issues. The note will be sent along a small package, consisting of a basket from Ghana, some Fair Trade chocolate and an organic non-alcoholic Christmas glögg.

On the 26^th of November, Mondo arranged a youth seminar on social media and migration issues. A social campaign expert from Finland (Arto Sivonen from one of the best-known agencies in Finland – Måndag) spoke to the youths about how to plan and execute really successful campaigns and the youth had the chance to try out their ideas – after a session of brainstorming, each group presented a possible social campaign and Arto gave feedback to their ideas.

One group's presentation about a
social media campaign idea called "We are all immigrants".

In November, some articles were still published from the journalist's grant trip to the Aral sea:

http://reis.postimees.ee/3898257/kalale-araali-merele-saaki-tuleb-nagu-muda
http://maailm.postimees.ee/3857215/jaanus-piirsalu-kesk-aasia-blogi-araali-mere-aeaeres 

DECEMBER

To celebrate the end of the year holidays and say thank you to the policy makers who have been involved in development cooperation issues, we decided to compile a thank-you basket set for all the "world changers". The basket sets were slightly different depending on the recipient, but generally composed of: handicraft basket from Ghana, Mondo's 2017 calendar that lists all the SDG's and gives some background information about them for each month, the newest Mondo Arengupoliitika Teataja, a personalised card, a non-alcoholic organic glögg made in Estonia and tools made from fair trade chocolate by Chocolala – Estonia's only fair trade chocolate shop. We tried to combine the items in a way that would symbolise SDGs – a need for equality and sustainability both globally and locally.

Year-end SDG baskets :-)

In December, Mondo also held the penultimate grant competition for journalists. We received 7 very interesting proposals and the jury chose the winner based on a very interesting topic – the journalist aims to investigate the effects of palm oil plantations to biodiversity and development issues in Indonesia. The first meeting with the winner will take place in the beginning of January.

As two-thirds of the project is over, a lot of very interesting articles have been published in Estonian media thanks to the study trip and grant possibilities of Media4Development. Also all of the TV journalists from ERR are now ready with all the films and they have been broadcasted on the main national channel. Along with the articles and films, a lot of great photographs from all over the world have been made by the journalists. So we decided to have an additional activity that was not planned in the beginning of the project, but now seems like an excellent idea – we are now composing an exhibition of the photos taken on M4D study trips based on the 17 sustainable development goals. The photos and stories will be sent to print in the end of the year and hopefully by mid-January we will have an excellent exhibition in our hands that could be exhibited in schools, ministries or other places also during the Estonian Presidency. 

Another extra activity will be in the coming year – Mondo will arrange a joint trip to Uganda, as many partners still have the possibility to send journalists but lack the local contacts. To make use of the cooperation and knowledge-sharing between partners, Mondo proposed to take the know-how gained from VIKES and arrange a small group trip to Uganda in March. In December we started to do some planning and contact our partners to look for possible fixers and topics to investigate.

One thing that was postponed in December was the social media campaign – we had actually finished the filming already some time ago but it was necessary to film one clip again as the light had somehow ruined the quality of the clip. The clips will thus be posted on social media in mid-January.

Green Liberty: Fair Trade day - What is the real price of sports equipment?

Sports equipment – clothes and accessories – is essential element of sport. The quality of sports equipment significantly influences our well-being when we take a part in sports activities and achieve results. But what do we mean by the quality of sports equipment? The context of sustainable development expands understanding of quality and suggests examining sports industry from a global perspective, introducing new quality indicators - impact of sports equipment on social field and environment beside personal well-being and effectiveness, and its price – economic aspect.

Those who have been interested to find answers on questions – how fair is sports equipment and what is its real price and impact – participated in the Fair Trade day organized in the Latvian Academy of Sport Education (LASE) on November 10, 2016. This event invited different stakeholders connected with sport to reflect on how the local and the global contexts are integrated in sport, to clarify the real price of t-shirt, to participate in focus-group discussion about fairness of sports equipment, to watch two short documentaries about industry of Nike goods and production of football balls in Pakistan, and to discuss about sport and sustainable development. The Fair Trade day provided integration of academic and practical achievements of sports field, and was based on transdisciplinary approach, multi-stakeholder approach and glocalization methodology.

Seven different stakeholders were represented in the focus-group discussion:  Agnese Alksne, director of the platform of Latvian Corporate Social Responsibility who represented enterprises, organizations and professionals who introduce questions about sustainability (including good governance, business rights, supply chains, etc.) into professional and public agenda; Ilvis Ābeļkalns, lecturer at the Centre of Health and sport education, Faculty of Pedagogy, Psychology and Art, Latvia University who represented academics who provide sports teachers’ qualification and education;  Inese Bautre, sports curriculum specialist at National Centre for Education (NCE who represented NCE; Jānis Brizga, organization Green Liberty who represented non-governmental sector that implements projects and organizes activities to inform society about Fair Trade; Juris Grants, vice-rector of science of LACE who represented academia that supports sustainable development of sports science and practice; Liene Kukule, sport instructor of Ropaži Sport Centre who represented educators of sports interest education; Valda Kursa, director of LASE who represented contracting authorities of state institutions that are responsible for sports equipment purchasing. The main issues of focus-group discussion were about connection of Fair Trade and sport, awareness of the represented stakeholder group of Fair Trade issues, cooperation of the represented stakeholder group with other stakeholders in supporting Fair Trade.

Info about the event in homepage of Green Liberty and Latvian Academy of Sport Education. 

End of year update from BAAG - policy maker and public engagement

We launched the exhibition of photos from our Afghanistan Journalism Competition winners, Magda Rakita and Mark de Rond.  The first venue was the Atrium Gallery in the London School of Economics, a buzzing public space passed through by hundreds of students, teachers and members of the public every week.  We held a launch reception on the opening day, 28th November 2016, to which at least 40 people attended (those were the ones we managed to note on the attendance sheet, I think there were a few others!).  The evening included short speeches by Mark and Magda, and an insight into the reality of mental health treatment and perceptions in Afghanistan by Dr Yousuf Rahimi, an esteemed Afghan mental health expert and previous advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Health.
We got all creative and made a video of the event - watch it here!

And here are some photos from the installation and the launch event.

Once the exhibition closed in London on 9th December we rushed over to Dublin with it on the 12th and installed it in the gallery space of Europe House, the offices of the European Union in Ireland.  The exhibition will be open to the public there until 6th January 2017.  Again we held a small launch reception to which 14 guests came.  The Irish Times promoted the exhibition in their Saturday newspaper on the 10th and published an online gallery of the images on the 14th - which you can see here.
A few photos from the Ireland launch:

As a prolific social media user, our photographer Magda has succeeded in publishing her photos and Mark's accompanying text in a number of other online outlets - Big Smoke (Australia), Scroll.in, and Medium (the latter had 18,600 views and 4,000 reads by 10th December).  In addition, we were thrilled that BBC Persian interviewed Magda and filmed BAAG's Director in front of the exhibition for an extended news piece about mental health in Afghanistan.  You can see an online version of their news piece here.  Moreover, that link has been posted on the BBC Persian Facebook page where, at time of writing, it has received 70,000 views, 174 shares and 2,300 likes.

BAAG also managed to deliver its two national policy maker round tables in the closing months.
Our first was on November 29th and addressed the outcomes of the recent Brussels Conference on Afghanistan, asking if the commitments (financial and deliverables) made there by the Afghan government and international community were likely to see real change for the Afghan people.  We had a specialist speaker on human rights and another on stability and the peace process.

A couple of weeks later we held our second round table, this time a joint affair with two BAAG member organisations, Christian Aid and Global Witness (14th December).  Both organisations have specialist knowledge on drugs policy and development and the impact of illegal mining respectively, so our event asked how illicit economies such as these had an impact on development progress and prospects. We had expert speakers on these two themes and a third who looked at development progress in terms of the high numbers of Afghans choosing to leave the country (and thus indicating their lack of faith in development prospects/progress).  A reporter was hired who is drafting a paper that will be shared with the project partners and widely with UK policy makers in early 2017.
A total of 11 policy makers attended these two events, 7 of whom were engaging in a M4D event for the first time. The events were held in the Houses of Parliament estate and were organised with support from the APPG on Afghanistan (All Party Parliamentary Group).

Not the most exciting photo, but this was the panel at the Illicit Economies Round Table, showing L-R Stephen Carter of Global Witness (speaker on illicit mining), David Mansfield (expert speaker on opium production in Afghanistan), Jawed Nader (BAAG Director and event moderator), Professor Heaven Crawley (expert speaker on migration) and Madeleine Moon MP (Chair of event and of APPG Afghanistan):

Bulletin - Afghanistan between life and death

In December, PIN published its fourth issue of bulletin. We decided to dedicated the last issue of this year to Afghanistan. Tereza Engelová, Czech journalist, visited Afghanistan in November and she wrote for Rozvojovka an exclusive story about the current situation in Afghanistan. Also we interviewed PIN's colleague Jiří Bednář, who left a high prestige job in a consulting firm and has started to work in Myanmar. We published an analysis about Saudi Arabia's controversial development aid, a story about human trafficking in Nepal or a story about the impact of the banana business. Czech ambassador in Moldova Zdeněk Krejčí answer our question: "Why do we send the development aid to lower middle income countries?". Bulletins are sent to relevant decision makers, i.e. members of Czech national Parliament and Czech representatives in European Parliament, Ministries' officials and key development experts, scholars and NGO representatives.

Development festival in three Slovak cities

“I would also like to make my sustainable shake,” a teenage girl has uttered eagerly while staying in the queue in front of the “cycloshaker”, a stationary bicycle connected to the electricity generator and the liquidiser full of fair trade bananas, milk and some other additional ingredients.

Each visitor could mix her/his own non-alcoholic banana shake using just her/his own energy. It was one of the wide variety of activities prepared for visitors of (UN)SUSTAINABLE PARTY; ... so the next generations could enjoy such a party in Bratislava, Banská Bystrica and Košice, the major cities in western, central and eastern Slovakia.

This year we opted for new approach with organising our so called Development Day to commemorate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. We decided, for the first time in history of our organisation, not to launch event only in Bratislava, but also in other parts of our country.

Three events raising awareness about global issues and sustainable development

“Maybe you know, maybe not, but in coming days we will celebrate World Food Day,” Michal Mlynár opened his speech at first of the events, which took place on 14.10.2016 in Bratislava. Michal Mlynár from Slovak MFA was addressing audience of around 200 people of all ages, speaking about sustainability which integral part is also food security. That security which is currently under significant risk due to climate change impacts around the world.

Of course, we did not end up with bothersome speeches of representatives of various Slovak institutions and NGOs. No, no. It was just the beginning, compulsory skating around, and afterwards more juicy programme begun. It started with performance of theatrical comedy named Zachráň svojho Afričana (Save your African), which was making fun of stereotypes on so called developing world, and providing strong criticism of often standardised and industrialised ODA.

After the theatre act, which made people laughing and thinking  at the same time, we have officially announced results of the competition 2016 Dôstojný život pre všetkých (Decent Life for All) and awarded its winners, both writing journalists and photographers.

After that only free entertainment took place. Visitors could visit stands of our member organisations, get to know with up cycling fashion, speak with living books about their experience in global South countries, bike out their own banana shake, taste global cuisine... And, of course, listen and dance to the concert of the music band La3no Cubano, and later to DJ bringing his unique mix of music from global South with European tones.

(UN)SUSTAINABLE PARTY in Banská Bystrica and Košice

We immediately started to organise other two event just days after first successful one in Bratislava. Next one took place on 28.10.2016 in Banská Bystrica, atown located between mountains in central Slovakia, and in Košice,  a metropolis of eastern Slovakia. We, again, brought interesting programme for our visitors, supplemented by the public discussion about stereotypes of Africa, about development, development volunteering or humanitarian aid - we also used three short videos to make discussion more vivid.

We have, of course, brought also our exhibition of photos, cycloshaker for leg-made banana shakes, global cuisine from all around the world, and concert for those who wanted to move themselves more than during making their shakes.

Eurohouse: second half of the year 2016

Journalists’ Study Trips: Palestine, Nepal, Ghana and Mianmar
In July Lithuanian journalist Karolis Vysniauskas joined an international group in a study trip to Palestine, organized by VIKES. Karolis shared his insights from the study trip the next day upon his return on Lithuanian National Radio program Ryto garsai. Later there appeared his stories on Palestinian media, women’s hip hop band in a refugee camp and the University of Bethlehem. He also developed an article for national newspaper Lietuvos žinios and appeared on National television morning show „Labas rytas, Lietuva“.
In September Lithuanian weekly Verslo žinios journalist Milda Tarcijonaite joined the international group in a trip to Nepal. Until now three articles, namely on uniting of small farmers to promote local products, the attempts to change traditional societal attitudes towards women and the challenges people meet in building new shelters, appeared in the weekly. Two more to come in the printed version of the newspaper and the portal www.vz.lt In November two journalists - freelancer Rosita Garskaite and Lithuanian National Radio journalists Vaida Pilibaityte – went on a study trip to Ghana in November to collect materials on European electronic waste dump, the legacy of the first President of Ghana, the role of the Catholic Church and the 60 years of independence of the country. The materials will be publisized on the National Radio Station and daily Lietuvos zinios.
In November another journalist from the National Radio Station Indrė Anskaitytė visited Mianmar to collect materials for the radio documentaries on economic development and tourism industry as well as remaining drastic social inequalities, political situation and abuse of human rights.

Journalist Vaida Pilibaitytė working in a field in Ghana, November, 2016

Rountables

The Lithuanian group, represented by governmental and non-governmental representatives, Mrs Ruta Avulyte Jelage, Executive Director of Lithuanian NGDO Platform, Mr Saulius Kalvelis, Councelor of Development Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms Marija Kazlauskaite, Chief Officer of  Strategic planning division, Department of  Economics and International Relations of the Ministry of Environment, and Mr Kestutis Navickas, Chairman of Lithuanian Environment Coalition, participated at Bratislava International Roundtable: Sustainable Development Goals - Opportunities and Challenges, organized by the Slovak NGDO Platform in the beginning of September. Lithuanian representatives introduced the process of national preparation and organization for the implementation of the SDGs. Highlighting the challenges and  best practices in other countries, the event helped to set up closer cooperation between government institutions and other stakeholders, especially NGOs. Upon return, representatives from NGO umbrella organisations were offered to be members at the National Sustainable Development Commission.

During the electoral campaign to the Seimas (National Parliament), in early October the national roundtable discussion was organised between candidates of the main political parties and NGOs  on the implementation of SDGs in Lithuania, in particular tackling poverty, social inequality, improvement of education and other priority issues. The event was broadcast live on the Seimas internet TV and Facebook live. Following the discussion, several candidates were publicly asked related questions on the online platform www.zinaukarenku.lt about the implementation of SDGs in Lithuania and the role of education in it. In total, 54 responses from politicians were received.

Articles The cooperation with the national daily Lietuvos zinios has been renewed and a new sequence of articles on topical issues in developing countries appears weekly under a separate column The World as You See It from November 2016, both in electronic and printed versions. Three articles on different aspects of life in Malaysia, role of religion in Ghana and role of music and musicians community in Palestine were published. The articles also appear on the internet portal on human rights www.manoteises.lt

Informal discussions

Informal discussions on different developing countries were relaunched and are planned to take place till  summer 2017. Some of them are planned with foreigners residing in Vilnius, who are portrayed in a series of photo stories “Mūsiškiai” (Ours) - project’s social media campaign. The first informal meeting was organized on 24th November on the development and current situation of Ukraine with native Ukrainian living in Lithuania Diane Garlytska and publicist and activist Jonas Ohman. The discussion attracted over 30 participants.

Another discussion was organised on 14 December with journalists Rosita Garskaite and Vaida Pilibaityte on Political situation and elections that took place few weeks ago were discussed. Special attention was paid to environmental issues and technologic waste dump in the capital Accra that harms not only people living and working in the dump but in the other areas of the city as well.  Local efforts to cope these problems through education and other initiatives were also discussed as well as significant role of religion and religious communities.

Social Media Campaign

Social media campaign “Mūsiškiai” (“Ours”) has been launched in October.both in Lithuanian and English. In a series of photo stories posted on Facebook (can be found by hashtag #Ours #Mūsiškiai) we share the insights of the people who came to live in Lithuania from all over the world. They tell about their life both here and there, beautiful and painful things they encounter in Europe, Lithuania, challenges they face and stereotypes they hear. Every Tuesday we post a short photo story which will help Lithuanian public understand better and make these people more welcome. It also boost the awareness on specific country, for example Iran. People respond with comments and discussions takes place, especially in Facebook group “Foreigners in Vilnius”, which has around 6000 followers - both local and not.

So far 8 posts were made with 4 different personalities - people from Iran, Egypt, Nigeria and Ukraine. It reached around 15 000 audience on NGDO Platform alone, but the final number would be double or triple counting its popularity on public “Foreigners in Vilnius” group plus other posting places. The campaign will continue until summer. It has also offline features: informal discussions with the “heroes” of the photo stories are organised in Vilnius cafes, where various issues related to developing countries are discussed. Some of the stories will be developed into the articles and published in daily Lietuvos zinios and human rights portal www.manoteises.lt

Media Research

The qualitative media research was conducted to investigate the appearance of development issues in Lithuanian media. A group discussion and individual interviews were held with eight biggest media houses that publish most information on development issues. Major findings are as follows: (1) editors of media houses can hardly identify clear Lithuanian DC vision and priorities themselves and would like to have a more consistent defining of the national policy, communicated by both NGDOs and state institutions, also they lack information on the assistance transparency and efficiency mechanisms; (2) the content of the news portals is more and more defined by the editors-on-duty, also articles of opinion formers are getting more popular and bigger reach-out, therefore more conditions should be provided for them to gain authentic experience and develop their relevant competences, including practical trainings (3) media houses are looking forward to closer cooperation with field experts and NGOs; (4) considering the high competition between local and development topics, the latter should be presented in innovative, catchy and related to local contexts forms, etc.

The survey results were introduced at the international discussion on contemporary challenges in nowadays media Media Buzz versus quality journalism held on 18 August in Vilnius. The major audience there were Lithuanian journalism students.

The publication of the research can be found here.

Bulletin

The fourth issue of the electronic bulletin addresses the topics of Sustainable Development Agenda and national implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. Based on the interviews made with officials (Ms Raimonda Murmokaite, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the United Nations, Ms Violeta Motulaite, director of the Development Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Kestutis Navickas, Minister of Environment), the articles cover the status quo in preparing to implement SDGs in Lithuania, the global concept of SDGs, the problems related to defining global indicators, best national practices in the preparation for SDG implementation, etc. The publication is sent out in mid-December 2016 to 551 subscribers (decision makers, media, NGO activists and other subscribers of the NGDO Platform  newsletter). It is also publisized on the internet sites of the House of Europe and NGDO Platform (pagalba.org). Later on, it is planned to publish individual articles in the media.

Miscellaneous

10 November project staff met with the representatives of the Africa Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss cooperation possibilities in organising Africa Days events in 2017.

The bulletin and the project was introduced at the national development cooperation conference Sustainable Development Goals 2030: Lithuanian Contribution and Responsibility held on 6 December by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Negotiations are underway with the Institute of Strategic Communications on the joint organisation of the journalists article/photo competition and the study trip of the winners to developing countries in 2017.

People in Need: second half of the year 2016

Czech TV in Ethiopia

In June, the TV crew spent two weeks in Ethiopia. Michal Kubal, the chief foreign editor of the Czech Television, visited PIN’s mission and the Light for the World project. He produced a short documentary about a girl Dami, who underwent a life changing eye operation that gave her eyesight back.  

Bulletin – Minorities in Myanmar

PIN published a third issue of bulletin in October. This issue’s main story was about Naga people in Myamar – the forgotten ethnic minority. The bulletin then covered the various topics, such as Mongolian post service – how to reach the remote nomad populations thanks to new technologies, the export of Colombian cocoa to the European market, the causes and consequences of the migration from African countries to Europe and the drones and their use for the development. We also asked Ivo Šilhavý, Czech ambassador in Kosovo, what the transformation experience of the Czech development cooperation means in practice. Bulletins are sent to relevant decision makers, i.e. members of Czech national Parliament and Czech representatives in European Parliament, Ministries' officials and key development experts, scholars and NGO representatives.

Media supplement – Czechs abroad

In the biggest national newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, People in Need published a six pages long media supplement on October 21^st. The supplement focused on the Czech humanitarian and development aid. We interviewed Marek Hrubec, the first rector of Czech founded university in Burundi, Pavel Mikeš, Czech ambassador in Nigeria and former EEAS ambassador in Ethiopia, and we also asked Jiří Bednář, PIN’s finance officer in Myanmar, why he decided to leave a private company and work in the non-profit sector. Michal Kaplan, director of the Czech development agency, wrote an article about Czech development cooperation strategy and what are the main assets of Czech aid. Furthermore, the readers get to know the work of the Czech Tourist Club in Brazil, the Doctors without Borders in Iraq, Czech bio farmers in Moldova or Czech jewellery makers in Palestine. The impact of the supplement is quite high - the average newspaper’s readership is approximately 615 000 readers, and PIN had a very positive feedback from the readers and also policy stakeholders.  

Marek Hudema in Mongolia

In October, Marek Hudema from the newspaper Hospodářské noviny received a grant for the travel to Mongolia to visit PIN’s mission. So far, as an outcome of the trip he published two articles in the printed newspaper and also on the news webpage ihned.cz. First article focused on the upsides and downsides of mineral resources in Mongolia and the second one covered the country’s economic situation and the introduction of the system for the electronic recording of sales.  

Social media campaign

In November, PIN with collaboration with the marketing agency Prague Bistro Digital launched a development awareness campaign Světová práce (“World job”). During two weeks, the campaign was running on Facebook and on the job website www.jobs.cz. On the campaign’s microsite and Facebook page several job offers in developing countries such as “a marketing manager in Sri Lanka, an architect in Mongolia or an educational expert in Ethiopia” were advertised to those who might find the position relevant according their preferences. Each job advertisement had a catchy description and set of benefits to attract the target audience and to raise their curiosity. However, after clicking on “Apply” the point of the campaign was revealed – the jobs were never offered to expats, the positions are always occupied by local people whom PIN transfers the experience and knowledge in order to become independent.