Communication is an essential part of Caritas work in the region at all levels, although most of the time implemented with limited resources. Caritas member organizations in Asia agreed that not all members have a dedicated person nor a team of communication, yet it does not refrain the member organizations in sharing news and updates of their works through various means of communications regularly.
The members identified a strong need of an effective communication in the region as a united approach in realizing our common mission, yet respecting local capacity and autonomy of national caritas.
Even before COVID-19, Caritas confederation was already met with some challenges on communication and resource mobilization. One such challenge was that, even when our Caritas humanitarian teams across the globe were quickly able to fly to the affected country, after every major disaster, there were already some gaps on communication with national governments, with other humanitarian actors, or even with the local Caritas. The COVID-19 situation only exacerbated this challenge, as it further affected communication and coordination between Caritas member organizations (MOs) and partners, especially during emergencies with restriction and limitation of travels.
At these difficult times, even for those MOs that already have a designated communication team, there are also challenges in providing good pictures, stories and other relevant information. We are now heavily reliant on internet connectivity, which in some countries, is not easily accessible. We are now seeing more and more challenges in attending to requests from different sides in such a short period of time.
Caritas recognizes that there are opportunities in these times of difficulties. Many of the innovative minds in our confederation have found ways to tackle the challenges and adapt new ways of doing things. And the stories of some of the MOs in Asia and Europe could help us into how we can further integrate communication and resource mobilization into our disaster management mechanism, especially during pandemic time.
This webinar was an opportunity for Caritas organizations to learn from others and also to share experiences on doing communication and resource mobilization and to come up with a common path to pursue with regard to our regional communication and resource mobilization actions.
Date: 25 May 2021Moderator: Ms. Jing Henderson of Caritas Philippines
Speakers:
- Fr. Paul Moonjely, Executive Director of Caritas India.
- Mr. Linus Ng, Executive Director of CHARIS Singapore
- Ms. Astrid Radner of Caritas Austria
- Ms. Marta Petrosillo of Caritas Internationalis
The pandemic situation and travel restriction made it difficult for Caritas organization to go directly to disaster affected areas in order to gather pictures, stories and other relevant information to produce quality and engaging communication materials. Caritas member organizations (MOs) in the affected areas, on the other hand, are putting their best efforts to share their stories to the world using the existing resources but often times they must deal with real challenges on the ground. Most of MOs in Asia must divide their time and resources between communication and the actual relief work, not to mention access to the affected areas and internet connectivity.
In this SHAPE Community of Practice session, Caritas Asia invited Ms. Astrid Radner of Caritas Austria to share her experience and best practices in overcoming this challenge, using an approach called Digital Press Trip. The general information of Digital Press Trip was already presented by Ms. Radner previously in Communication and Resource Mobilization in Emergency Webinar. The brief presentation caught the attention of participants who were interested in learning more about the approach as one of the innovative ways for content gathering in the midst of travel restriction.
This session included step-by-step preparation, human resources and technical requirements, and lessons learned from their previous projects.
Date: 15 July 2021- Moderator: Ms. Silvia Holzer of Caritas Austria
- Speaker: Ms. Astrid Radner of Caritas Austria