COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT
We support municipalities, NGOs, and international organizations in interacting with local communities. We also work with private sector clients to promote their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. We offer research, strategies, and facilitation (private consultations, focus groups, workshops, public debates, and mediation). We also work on supporting advocacy and communication efforts and engagement of local stakeholders in policy making. Our experts have developed and delivered a wide array of capacity building modules to support public, private and civil society organizations in promoting public causes and the public good.
Our services in this field include:
Research & Analysis
The LUGARIT team supports clients to identify their communications needs by assessing the eco-system where they operate, map the stakeholders and their perceptions and communication priorities, and to map the discursive field where they operate.
We provide studies on outreach and messaging for public and private clients; to help them understand how their public communications are perceived.
We also support our clients to understand what are the competing perceptions and messages that their target audiences are exposed to, and to assess the trends in public opinion surrounding developmental and political issues.
Scenario Development
LUGARIT’s team provides visioning exercises to help clients communicate options and scenarios to their audiences and constituencies.
We help clients develop contingency plans for different scenarios and to prepare responses and messaging to meet these different scenarios.
Advice
Our team supports clients in developing short, medium, and long-term communication strategies. And we help them define benchmarks and indicators for the success of their outreach.
We help teams identify their internal communication bottlenecks and develop better strategies for improving their internal communications to work towards common goals.
LUGARIT supports progressive minded policy makers to explain and communicate their reform initiatives to the wider public.
We support clients in tailoring messages to reach specific groups and to ensure that complex developmental topics are accessible to different levels of audiences.
We assist teams implementing communication strategies to develop administrative procedures to manage their operations and communicate results.
Stakeholder Engagement
LUGARIT works with clients to understand their audiences and the complexity of their perceptions. We tailor different instruments to ensure constant tracking of stakeholders’ positions, and we help our clients in positioning themselves to engage in complex eco-systems of competing stakeholders.
We facilitate dialogue among stakeholders, and er design encounters to help ease communication among antagonistic stakeholders. Our experts prepare engagement packages to help clients understand the priorities and language of their interlocutors before engaging them.
We help clients develop long term engagement plans and set up institutional memory regarding their engagement with other stakeholders.
Our team works closely with stakeholders to mitigate differences in vision and to help them reach win-win outcomes.
Capacity Building
We offer training and capacity building modules on facilitation, mediation and negotiation to teams that engage in communication.
We support policy makers and politicians in developing their positioning and to communicate their properties.
We work with public, private and civil society actors to communicate the public value of their work and enhance their messaging in a strategic manner.
Monitoring & Evaluation
LUGARIT creates monitoring and evaluation systems to help development actors to assess their positioning, track the impact of their work, and to communicate it to wider audiences and stakeholders. We approach M&E systems as tools for learning and creating positive externalities, and we believe that the true impact of development work is only scalable when communicated properly.
We support clients in the creation of standard objectives for complex developmental programs, and in aligning different stakeholders in the process to contribute to these objectives. For that purpose, we help clients to identify clear indicators, and to establish participatory approaches for harvesting the necessary data to assess progress towards those objectives.
We lead teams to harvest outcomes, to learn from their day-to-day work, to improve their work, and to enhance the perception of their work in the public sphere.
Related Works
Date: 12 September 2024
LUGARIT facilitated a PeaceGame play session at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, part of the Executive Program on Conflict and Fragility Management. The session, centered on the Syrian civil war, provided mid-career professionals with hands-on experience in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Participants praised its realistic approach to negotiations and strategy-making.
Year: 2021 - 2022
Client: NRC - Norwegian Refugee Council
A communication and dissemination strategy for a Housing, Land, and Property Joint Programme (HLP JP) in Syria; funded by the European Union and involving NRC, UN-Habitat, UNDP, and UNHCR, with FAO initially as a partner.
Year: 2010 - 2012
Client: Syria Trust for Development
An NGO initiative for a hands-on science and discovery centre in Syria, educating children on news making through interactive computer zones, encompassing the entire process of news creation. The project involves the design and implementation of the entire exhibition, including developing a surface-touch software for 13 expo zones.
Year: 2008 - 2011
Client: GIZ - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
A participatory city vision project for Aleppo, Syria, by 2025. Co-funded by various organizations including GIZ and the World Bank. We join stakeholders in planning for a city with multiple centers, modern transportation, diverse neighborhoods, and green, compact urban spaces. Additionally, we offer comprehensive communication services, involving community participation, branding, and promoting the project's vision through various media and events.