MANILA - Isis International along with partners Aalochana Centre for Documentation and Research on Women (India), Civil Media Development Institute (Thailand), FemLINK Pacific: Media Initiatives for Women (Fiji) & HELP Resources, Inc. (Papua New Guinea) launched the book and the campaign PC4D- Peoples Communications for Development. PC4D is a three-year research involving non-government organisations and grassroots women in five countries: Fiji, India, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and the Philippines. The research showed which information communication tools (ICTs) are most accessible, effective, and empowering for grassroots women. In all five countries, traditional tools like radio, television and video, print media, and theatre remain the most commonly used tools by grassroots women. Posters and other forms of print media were effective in Thailand and Fiji. With the exception of mobile phones, which have been identified as most accessible in the Philippines, new information and communication technologies like the computer and the internet are still alien and inappropriate to many. The computer was cited by intermediary groups in the Philippines and Thailand as useful in producing presentation materials. Internet was also considered efficient by intermediary groups but not empowering for grassroots women.

“New ICTs were seen as potentially empowering for grassroots women in Fiji and PNG but not necessarily so in India and the Philippines. New ICTs were not considered suitable for grassroots women in Thailand. Access to ICTs must only come after basic needs, according to intermediary groups in Fiji, India and the Philippines. New ICTs are largely inaccessible in Fiji and PNG given the lack of electricity and infrastructure,” the book says.

For the respondents, tools are effective when these are visually stimulating, interactive, fast, far-reaching, and culturally appropriate. Respondents also interpreted empowerment in various ways, taking to account their own socio-cultural contexts. But generally, empowerment for grassroots women, allows economic independence, political participation, community organising and solidarity-building, individual agency or self-transformation, family transformation, and social transformation.

Across five-countries, oral, two-way, face-to-face communication was considered the best way to empower women. Communication tools that create interaction, participation, reflection, and dialogue were considered most empowering. Oral communications is still most empowering because of its immediacy, dialogue and direct interaction.

Isis board member and former Philippine senator, Leticia Ramos-Shahani, considers PC4D as a material which can inform policy-making and project initiatives around ICTs. “What the book shows is very humbling. Grassroots women still come from the “bukid” (rural community).”

She adds, “The introduction of ICTs is based on the notion that these will lead to empowerment and development for all. This ICT-centred development is the reason that we are interrogating this framework to determine the most effective communication tools used by intermediary groups to reach grassroots women.”

The book also provides recommendations on four areas: gender and development paradigms and communication policy directions; the politics of traditional communication tools, state interventions, and donor programmes for grassroots women; social movements, feminist networks, intermediate groups, and communication strategies; and traditional communication tools and new ICTs as shaping and reflecting everyday life.

“Current communication policy directions in the developing South are clearly based on the neo-liberal model of development where “modernisation” is perceived as the key to poverty alleviation and the uplifting of poor peoples' quality of life. It is imperative therefore to look at new ICT policies in particular and communication policies in general within alternative modes of development,” asserts the PC4D campaign.

Last March 11, PC4D the book and campaign was also launched in Fiji by FemLINK Pacific. FemLINK Pacific director Sharon Baghwan Rolls said:“What is important is that there is greater appreciation of the gender power relations even in the context of how a woman, especially in our rural communities, is or is not able to access information and that her own personal empowerment is closely linked to the availability of such information; is the information, for example, available in a format that she can understand or share further. There is also a need to also consider infrastructure issues when planning developments relating to new ICTs and whether or not communities are able to contribute to local programming as well.”

It was attended by a number of women from the communities, non-government organisations, and international organisations. PC4D launches will also be conducted in India and Thailand within the coming weeks.

For more information about FemLINK Pacific, please visit their website on http://www.femlinkpacific.org.fj/

The full article about the Fiji launch can be accessed on
http://www.wunrn.com/news/2008/03_08/03_17_08/031708_asia.htm

PC4D is available at Isis International for US$35 inclusive of mailing fees. To order, please contact Elvira Colobong at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.