EYD2015: Media4Development: Mondo activities July

Work with Journalists

During summer months, work with journalists was quieter. The main activity was joint trip to Afghanistan, for which we had chosen A. Lobjakas to take part. In June he went through a short security training conducted by Mondo's humanitarian and and security expert G. Teder. Additionally, he also took the UN online security course. The joint trip itself was a success and our participant was very pleased with the overall experience.

In autumn, we continued planning the joint study trip to Ghana, of which Latvian and Estonian journalists would take part. From Estonia, we chose H. Tammemäe, the head editor of Müürileht, to participate. She also took part of the autumn training in Helsinki arranged by VIKES. Müürileht is an alternative monthly newspaper, that can be subscribed to but is also distributed for free in some locations. Although it's print numbers are not very big, it has a very specific niche and it's readers are accustomed to reading longer and more thorough articles. There is also a tendency that the topics written about in Müürileht will become popular in other media channels after a few months.

Ghana study trip participants.

The grant competition winner and his colleague visited Mekong river delta in Vietnam in November to research sustainability issues there. A freelance journalist writing mostly for women's magazines, took a trip to Palestine to highlight issues of inequality and development. In the final days of December, a journalist and photographer will visit Bangladesh to research and write about the situation of Rohingyas in refugee camps.

Work with Policy-Makers

In July, we posted bulletins for members of the parliament and MFA officials. Along with the bulletin, invitations to the international roundtable and conference was also sent out to policy makers. The bulletin can be seen here: http://mondo.org.ee/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mondo-arengupoliitika-teataja-el-eesistumine.pdf

We met and consulted with MFA officials and diplomats to be able to arrange the roundtable as best as possible. To facilitate information exchange between policy makers, we decided to make the roundtable into a two-day event: the first day being a closed, invitation-only roundtable and the second day being an open-to-public conference. The conference was attended by 105 people, the roundtable by 40 people. Both days took place in the conference centre of Swissotel Tallinn. Photos of both days can be seen here, background information and panelists of the conference can been seen here. A very helpful team of international and Estonian volunteers helped us to arrange the events, helping with everything from taking photos to welcoming people at the registering table. All event guests received thematic bulletins, agendas of the event, notebooks, and handicraft conference bags from either Afghanistan or Uganda. Both days were a success thanks to the wonderful participants, panelists, moderators, and their expertise. It was a great honor of receiving the presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs who gave the key note address, and also of our high-level panelists.

In autumn, Mondo also arranged a study trip for policy makers to Ghana. An MFA official and a member of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs committee took part.

Work with general audience

In the summer, Mondo arranged an active social media campaign on the myths of development cooperation. The theme was "Real people. Real stories. Real aid.", video clips filmed in Estonia and photos taken in Mondo's partner communities were used to bring development cooperation closer and explain it through clear and concrete examples. The posts were seen 134,756 times.

We also actively advertised the conference "Development and Security: Which Comes First?" on social media, e-mail lists and our website.

In November and December, the second public campaign of this year was conducted. Together with the design and advertising company Velvet we decided to continue with the same "Hoolin" topic as we did for the spring SDG campaign. To make it more concrete, education was chosen as a main theme and the campaign main slogan was chosen as "Hoolin haridusest" or "I care about education". To bring the topic closer to the general audience, we decided to focus on the universal nature of education and the wish to be educated. To do so, a campaign ambassador – the actress Elina Reinold – and her son agreed to visit Ghana. A filmmaker went with them as they visited Richard, a young Ghanian boy who is receiving school support from Elina through Mondo. Photos of Elina and her son in together with Richard and his grandmother became the main visual of the campaign. The campaign was featured on outdoor bus-stop advertising systems, in several magazines, and in social media.

To finish the campaign, an education and development cooperation themed public event was held in the Estonian National Museum in Tartu, under the name of "Hoolin haridusest" or "I care about education". After inspiring talks from Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Tõnis, Lukas Ilmar Raag, Marju Lauristin, Loone Ots, and Mondo's board members and partners, different artists performed and Syrian food and fair trade chocolate cake was eaten. 172 people registered their participation to the event.