Honing Skills for Research Communication

This project on research communication engaged with research organizations to facilitate them to improve their ability to engage with policy makers and the media through capacity building workshops. The workshops, held in 2014, were designed and conducted by Aditi Kapoor in her capacity as a Facilitator for Think Tank Initiative <www.thinktankinitiatve.org>, a global programme of the IDRC.

Called ‘Policy Engagement and Communication’, or PEC for short, these workshops and dialogues were held with researchers of various Think Tanks. The workshops covered areas such as behavioural change for better policy communication as well as media and policy advocacy skills. Senior government officers and media persons were called in as local resource persons and they helped with simulated exercises as part of the workshop design. This also gave the research organizations an opportunity to widen their contacts with people whom they could engage with in future.

Some of the tools used and outputs can be found on <www.researchtoaction.org> as part of global resources for people to ‘improve the way development research is communicated and utilized.’

The Think Tanks engaged with were Centre for Public Affairs and Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (C STEP) in Bangalore; Institute for Rural Management (IRMA) in Anand;, National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi.

As part of the South Asia PEC programme, other Think Tanks in the region also participated in regional workshops. The overall implementation of the PEC programme was done by Practical Action Consultancy, Kathmandu, with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK, as its knowledge partner.