BAAG in June and July

Half a year gone already!  Here is a short update on how the BAAG team have been contributing to the M4D programme in the last 6 weeks.

Our main activity was the first of our National Policy Maker Roundtables.  The theme of this was development in fragile states, using Afghanistan as a case study - and how the development sector can better communicate these complicated programmes to the public.  Public support of overseas development is important, but perceptions of the importance of this, and the ways in which aid is delivered can be negative.  This is particularly true for state-building activities in conflict-affected or fragile states - compared to, for example, a natural disaster such as the recent Nepal earthquake.  
Our Round Table posed 2 questions: 
How is the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States (the New Deal) shaping aid in Afghanistan, with what impact? And how might the New Deal shape public support for ODA in the UK?

19 policy-makers and development experts attended the half-day discussion on 9th June, which was co-hosted by Chatham House.  The breakdown of participants was as follows:

• 4 civil servants

• 1 Member of Parliament

• 2 media experts/journalists

• 2 private sector professionals working in Afghanistan

• 3 NGO staff working on Afghanistan

• 6 think tank researchers/analysts 

• 1 academic 

The report of the event is being finalised as I write and we intend to share it with British and Irish policy-makers, the NGO sector and our M4D partners within the month. 

One of the think tank attendees, Bill Byrd, used the content of our National Round Table to shape his presentation and discussions at the International Round Table in Riga two days later.   

Our other activity has been the development of our photo-journalism contest.  In further consultations last month, we have agreed that the contest will be for experienced journalists and photographers who will work in partnership to produce a piece of original development journalism in Afghanistan.  
A dedicated competition webpage is being developed, through which entrants will submit their proposals and examples of their work for the judges consideration.  A media partner, who will publish the winner's work, is being sought - this is likely to be a British or international online media outlet, providing a large public readership. 
BAAG hope to launch the competition in late July or early August, for a period of 6-8 weeks.

Finally, an activity we undertook back in April 2015 is about to bear fruit.  BAAG is a member of BOND, the network of over 440 organisations working in or supporting international development.  Their Conflict and Humanitarian thematic group worked with various NGO country-specific networks (including BAAG) to produce a briefing pack on the state of the world's humanitarian crises for the new influx of British MPs (post our May general election).  BAAG provided this paper which has been incorporated into the pack of around 12 different country contexts.  This week we heard that BOND will be sending the pack in the week starting 20th July to 50 MPs (those who hold Minister/Shadow Minister roles in relevant ministries or committees, chair/sit on those committees or who are foreign affairs spokespeople).  BOND are also planning a media campaign to highlight these emergencies and BAAG will participate in that. 

BAAG activity update

Here's a quick overview of our M4D activities since early April.

Public awareness raising event.
On 15th April we held our Nowruz (New Year) event at the Canadian High Commission in central London.  It proved to be an extremely popular event - possibly due to the tasty Afghan savory and sweet snacks being served and the wine! However, the highlights of the evening were the music and dance performances by Afghans and regional professionals.  These, along with a short panel discussion by a group of 3 young Afghans studying Masters degrees in the UK under the Chevening Scholar scheme, provided an alternative and upbeat perspective on the country to our guests. 
Over 110 attended the event.  15 completed our short online survey afterwards, and whilst 7 of these had lived or worked in Afghanistan for a number of years, others said their familiarity of the country was low or mid-level. 9 respondents (56.3%) said the event had changed their perspective of Afghanistan positively or for the better. 

More photos from the event can be viewed here. 

Media training in Finland
BAAG were delighted to secure renowned BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle to speak at the VIKES training in Helsinki.  Mark had just left the BBC to start his freelance consulting career, and was thrilled to be able to share his experiences and expertise with the attendees. His familiarity with Nigeria has also proven helpful in preliminary discussions regarding the field trip to that country. 

International Round Table in Riga
BAAG has, with other partners, supported Green Liberty in their development of the agenda and participant list for the upcoming Financing for Development round table.  After consultation with Afghanistan, fragile states and development professionals in London, we selected Bill Byrd of USIP to present the case study on fragile states.  Bill will also be participating in our national round table  in London earlier that week, and can therefore feed into his presentation some of the points and recommendations raised during that. 

National Round Table in London
We've been working hard to refine the theme, question and participant list for the first of our national round tables.  Wanting to support the content of the Riga international round table, we considered financing in fragile states for the theme.  In consultation with experts from Chatham House, ODI, RUSI, LSE, SOAS, Christian Aid, DFID and USIP, we refined this to focus on how the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States has impacted on development in Afghanistan, and how the complexity of development in fragile states is communicated to the public.  We're delighted that Chatham House has accepted our invitation to collaborate on the event, and they will host our discussion on 9th June.  It's fair to say that, so shortly after our country's general election, it is proving difficult to generate commitments to attend from many members of parliament.  However, a number of civil servants have accepted our invitations and we're confident that we'll meet our target of 20 policy-maker attendees across this event and our 2nd round table planned at the end of this year.  We also have a number of fragile states experts from think tanks, academia, NGOs and journalism who will attend. 

And finally... the photo/journalism competition.
BAAG will be launching this in the summer, with a view to our 2 winners (1 photographer and 1 journalist) travelling to Afghanistan in November to produce an original piece of development journalism.  We have consulted with a number of photographers and journalists (including from the BBC and Reuters) and are finalising our project outline.  We aim to secure a media partner, who will publish the final piece produced by the winners and will help us publicise the event.  Watch this space for launch announcements! 

BAAG's activity update

BAAG have been tackling a number of M4D activities in recent weeks.  Here's a short summary:

Journalist training with VIKES
We've worked with Maiju at VIKES to finalise the training agenda, and also drafted a Guidelines document for the participants on the valuable relationship between journalists and NGOs.
We've also been considering British journalists as expert panelists.  Our first choice, Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent of the BBC, was sadly unavailable during the necessary dates. We've subsequently spoken to 7 other accomplished journalists and are pleased to have secured Mark Doyle, who until last week was the International Development Correspondent for the BBC and is now starting his consulting career - we're his first assignment!  Mark brings a wealth of development journalism training, and is also very familiar with Nigeria which bodes well for the proposed study trip.

International Roundtable with Green Liberty
Along with other partners, BAAG has helped with development of the agenda and concept note.  We're now considering various British experts for a panelist position, and hope to confirm that soon.

M4D webpage
BAAG have designed and now launched the dedicated Media4Development page on our website.  You can see that via this link.

Public awareness event
We are finalising the agenda for our first M4D public awareness-raising event - a fun and informative evening celebrating the Afghan New Year (Nowruz).  Invitations have been sent to over 460 people - those familiar with the country and those who are not - and the event details can be found on this link. We've just taken delivery of our M4D banner - as you'll see in this photo!

National Roundtable
Now that we understand the agenda for the international roundtable, BAAG are working on the agenda and guest list for their complementary UK roundtable.  It will focus on how development assistance has supported Afghanistan, and will include participant(s) from Afghanistan.  More details to follow.

Ireland visit
In March we spent 2 days in Dublin, updating our Irish members on the M4D project, meeting with Irish Aid to talk about their continued support to Afghanistan and identifying possible venues for the photo-journalism contest exhibition later this year.

That's it for now - more to follow in the coming months.

Introducing BAAG to the M4D team

BAAG – British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group – is very excited to be part of the Media4Development programme.  Our Programme & Communications Coordinator, Jenny, joined the planning meeting in Tallinn last month and she and the team are now busy developing our activities for the year. 

Before we start blogging about these in detail, we thought a short introduction to BAAG would be useful – and hopefully interesting!

BAAG was established in 1987. It is a unique advocacy network organisation with 28 current member agencies. BAAG’s vision is to contribute to an environment where Afghans can take control of their own development and bring about a just and peaceful society. We seek to put our vision into practice by:

·    Bringing member agencies and the wider relief and development community together to advocate continued international commitment to the development of Afghanistan;

·  Sharing information and knowledge to improve policy debate and decision-making processes with a particular emphasis on ensuring that those processes reflect the views, needs and aspirations of the Afghan people;

·     To enhance the abilities of Afghan civil society in influencing national and international policies on Afghanistan.

BAAG has a long history of informing policy- and decision-makers regarding the reality of Afghanistan’s development and humanitarian needs and the challenges of delivering these. Similarly BAAG has worked with the British media to raise awareness of Afghanistan for many years, developing strong relationships with a number of high profile print and broadcast journalists.

Subsequently BAAG will participate in the Media4Development programme both to provide expert advice to project partners and to continue to raise the issue of development cooperation to the British and Irish public, media and policy makers.

In 2015 BAAG plans the following Media4Development activities:

•         Providing expert journalism input to a media training workshop delivered by VIKES in April.
•         Providing expert policy-maker input to an international round table in Latvia organised by Green Liberty in May/June
•         Hosting two round tables of British and international policy-makers and influencers on development themes, in June and November/December
•         Raising public awareness of development cooperation and the European Year of Development via events in London and Ireland and through the development of four news articles
•         Organising a journalism and photojournalism competition to award aspiring development journalists with a research trip to Afghanistan

In the past few weeks we’ve started our social media activities by writing a News article about the Media4Development programme, posting this on Twitter and Facebook and tweeting other development stories using the #EYD2015 tag.   We’re talking to our website designers to develop a dedicated web page for the programme and are looking into some public events in which we can promote EYD2015 and Afghanistan.  More to follow soon!