DFID funded research by MEMA kwa Vijana: Good things for young people has brought new evidence to thinking on how to prevent HIV in young people in Tanzania. The research took place through a series of adolescent sexual and reproductive health trials focused on developing skills and changing the attitudes of young people. The programme employed a participatory approach through interventions in schools, health services and the broader community.

45% of HIV transmission worldwide takes place among people aged 15-24 years. This means that if the spread of the epidemic is going to be halted and reversed young people must be targeted. Unfortunately, many young people do not have access to the knowledge and skills to reduce their vulnerability. This is particularly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa.

Numerous different approaches to preventing HIV in young people are in use through various prevention programmes. These  include: behaviour change interventions, biomedical interventions and social interventions. The most common of these are behavioural interventions through sexual health and drug related education. This education is provided in-schools, and through the social marketing of condom use.

The research found that behaviour interventions had a positive effect on young people’s knowledge, but did not change behaviour or reduce HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. These findings suggest that carefully designed interventions delivered through schools or community peer-educators on their own do not have the desired impact. This may be explained through deep lying social norms in behaviour or in the nature of the intervention itself.

Population norms are seen as a great barrier to successful prevention among the young. Preventative methods are unlikely to be successful if they go against behavioural norms within a community. However, many studies have shown that self-reported studies are not always reliable among this age group. There is a tendency for young people to report what they believe is socially acceptable rather than what is true. This has resulted in calls for more studies to combine behaviour change interventions with the mapping of biological outcomes. Studies of this nature have mainly taken place in high-income countries, but have also shown mixed results.

The reality is that attitudes can be very hard to change. Increasing young people’s knowledge about adolescent sexual and reproductive health is not enough to bring significant results. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly a good starting point from which to develop intervention practices. It is also clear that the real impact of behavioural and educational interventions might be hidden through the ‘socially desirable answers’ given by young people in this type of study.

Read more about MEMA kwa Vijana: Good things for young people on R4D or on the programmes own website through the following link: http://www.memakwavijana.org/

Pest outbreaks can have catastrophic effects on farmer’s crops, their livelihoods and the food security of families and their communities. The African armyworm poses such a threat. For example, in 1999 armyworm outbreaks devastated 311,000 hectares of grassland in Tanzania. Farmers who did no spray their land lost the majority of their crops, while cattle that grazed on infected land also died.

Farmers are often unprepared because forecasts from the national forecasting service do not always reach them in time. There is desperate need for the development of community-based forecasting, where villagers in high risk areas are taught how to predict armyworm and other pest outbreaks. This will encourage farmers to check their crops more often, communicate the impending dangers of pest attach more rapidly, and build-up local knowledge based on local conditions.

Research into Use (RIU) has outlined how decision makers need to take some of the following steps:

• Ensure supplies and distribution of safe and effective pesticides at prices farmers can afford
• Fund, educate and train extension services on how to deal with pest outbreaks
• Create conditions that encourage private enterprise in agro-services, for example marketing armyworm forecast packs, traps and lures, and providing contract spraying, transport, distribution and micro-credit services.

Research by the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) on this issue is available on R4D through the following link: Economic evaluation and international implementation of community-based forecasting of armyworm.

The following article contains some of the key statements and ideas taken from Chris Whitty’s opening address at the CABI Global Summit: Food security in a Climate of Change. His speech underlines the need for a clear evidence-based approach to food security.

“Anyone reading newspaper headlines as their only source of information might believe that in agriculture and food security things are getting worse all the time.  The list of problems is long, and real.  It includes a population which is growing at a rate faster than agricultural production in many areas, increased volatility of food prices which affects the poorest, the current economic downturn, and of course the looming problems which will occur on account of climate change even with the most optimistic predictions from responsible scientists.”

“[Food security] is however a complex problem and deserves complex linked responses based on clear evidence of what works to minimise the danger that choices made in isolation of one another pull in different directions.”

“In addition to real choices in policy there are also a number of essentially false choices, largely driven by advocacy groups, which can take a lot of debating time without necessarily improving policy.  Some people for example try to force a choice between improved technology in agriculture on the one hand, and maximising output from existing technology on the other, when it should be obvious both are needed.  In all areas, not just agriculture, there is a substantial gap between what is achievable with the existing technology and what actually occurs in practice.”

“[T]here is no single cause for the yield gap [in agriculture], but rather a series of individual and often independent steps which degrade the yield. […] [A] complex and multi-stage response is always going to be less immediately attractive to policymakers than a single silver-bullet response, but it is the reality, and trying to simplify away a complex reality seldom helps effective policymaking.”

“[I]t is only when a combination of advances makes a new technology so much better than the existing technology that it will overcome the inertia and costs associated with major change. It is unrealistic to think that every small advance in technology will be deployed, or point to the fact they are not all adopted immediately to imply that only better delivery rather than new technology is what we need. We need both. When added together they produce a sufficiently better solution which will often have a sudden and unexpected impact across a wide area.”

“To minimise the impact of the climate change on food security is going to require both a behavioural and a technological response in affected countries.  The technological response is in a sense easier to plan even before we know what changes are likely in particular areas.  Within each of the regions where different staples such as maize, rice, wheat and tubers are grown there will be areas that get dryer, areas that get wetter, and some areas where salinity will increase at the same time as CO2 and temperatures rise.  Developing varieties of key plants which will minimise the reduction in productivity in these changed circumstances will be essential whatever happens in any particular sub-region.”

“Planning adaptation is a more complex task because it does require us to know what is going to change and where.  Currently our understanding of climate change science is relatively crude, especially as it affects Africa.  We cannot predict which regional areas and therefore which societies will be affected in particular ways with the degree of certainty needed to make a coherent policy response. Since steps to make adaptation easier have to start from the basis of existing cultural, environmental and agricultural practice this makes designing potential responses in advance of changes occurring very difficult, because we don’t know which change will occur where. An adaptation of farming practices to drier weather developed in Uganda may be of little or no use in Sudan, even if Sudan is subsequently the place where rainfall decreases, because cultural and agricultural practices are different.  This is made more complex again by the fact that society is not static but is changing rapidly, not always in a bad way.  The rates of GDP growth in many parts of Africa, whilst far slower than China or other parts of Asia, is still ahead of much of the northern world. This is mirroring a steady increase in agricultural productivity although not one fast enough for the probable growth in population.”

“Both in animal and plant health infectious diseases have the capacity to unpredictably and destroy whole industries and where they affect staple foods to change history.  For example potato blight changed the history of Ireland forever. Other plant and livestock diseases have had equally dramatic impact on development, and continue to do so. Taken cumulatively, the potential of disease to disrupt vulnerable livelihoods and reduce the positive impact that agriculture can have on poverty and food security remains vast. It is no coincidence that the green revolution was sparked by the work of the late Norman Borlaug, on developing wheat varieties resistant to stem rust. Ironically in the year of his death the emergence of new virulent strains of rust is once again threatening global food security, and indeed security more widely, including some very vulnerable areas- for example Ug99 in Iran is already a major economic problem, even if it does not spread to areas in Afghanistan we are trying to replace one cashcrop, opium poppies, with another, wheat. Addressing these problems requires a new global partnership, encompassing both the public research organisations, the CGIAR, regional research bodies and developed and developing countries national research organisations.”

“We must seize this opportunity to ensure that policymakers, who are making serious attempts to address food security, are given what they need to understand how the many challenges for food security you will be discussing in this conference interlink.”

“There are three possible responses to the fact that the policy challenges we face are very complex, made up of many steps and interlock. The first is to say ‘its just too difficult’ and give up in despair. The second is to say ‘well, lets just concentrate on a few big problems we can take a serious swing at’. The third is to recognise that with the difficulties of handling many complexities come real opportunities. Rather than one big idea we can respond with multiple small steps, which can be combined in many different ways for different situations. This actually makes it far more likely we can respond both to change we know will happen and to the unexpected. Its like the difference between investing in a diversified portfolio and putting all your money on a national lottery ticket. One is spectacular – but unlikely to succeed. The other is undramatic, but year on year both can and probably will lead to major change. Complex responses are, if well designed, flexible responses.”

“If we do not make a clear and compelling case for taking the complexities into account and discussing them openly we cannot be surprised if well-meaning people pushing a single, simple but sometimes unrealistic message capture the agenda.”

It is not long since biofuels offered policy makers a popular policy option, perceived to have long term benefit for the environment. However, the biofuels debate has moved on. This is largely due to new and robust scientific evidence that shows there is far more to consider in the biofuels policy debate.

Biofuels do reduce greenhouse gases because they sequester carbon through their growth. Yet, in October 2007 the OECD warned against the widespread implementation of ‘agro-fuel’ policy programmes. Realisation that policies favouring ‘agro-fuel’ production could lead to surging food prices and prove a major issue for global food security began to spread. This was because previous analysis had failed to count the carbon emissions that would occur as farmers respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland.

Research published in Science, 29^th February 2008 found that corn-based ethanol could nearly double greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increase greenhouse gases for 167 years as a result of land-use change. Biofuels are commonly produced from specifically grown crops, but can also be produced as a by product of other agricultural activities. The latter offers a much safer and sustainable policy option.

The two main types of biofuels are biodiesel made from vegetable oils, and bioethanol, made from sugar or starch. The European Union is the main producer of biodiesel, but bioethanol accounts for most global production. The USA and Brazil are the main producers.

It is predicted that 90% of fuel in sub-Saharan Africa comes from biofuels, such as wood and animal waste. This is possible without taking-up valuable farmland, and offers a more sustainable option for communities. Only when food security is no longer an issue for the developing world should the widespread adoption of agro-fuel policies be considered. For the benefit of people of these countries we need to look for more sustainable biofuels production methods, which ensure better food security and have less negative environmental impacts.

R4D has a wide range of research on biofuels, such as that that developed through the Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security (PISCES). This project aims is to increase available knowledge and understanding of policy relevant trade-offs between energy, food and water security for livelihoods in relation to bioenergy.

The CABI Global Summit was opened by DFID’s Chief Scientist Chris Whitty on Monday evening. His address spoke of the need to combine new evidence based knowledge and advanced technologies with a flexible approach to policy making. This message was carried forward into the first panel session – Food security: Helping to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger. The session brought forward the need to develop food policy that brings about ‘practical solutions for growing more and losing less’.

The 20^th century saw the world population increase from 1.5billion to 6 billion people. This has created a challenge in terms of global food security, now and over the long-term. Despite increasing food production per capita of the global population, the allocation of food resources is very uneven. The challenge of food security will not stand still, and it is predicted that food production will need to double by 2050 to feed the worlds expanding population.

This situation has been exacerbated by the increasing demand for meat globally, and the basic resources in terms of land and food staples required in its production. This is one factor that has led to the rapid rise in food prices over more recent years, putting an estimated 100 million into absolute poverty, especially in many developing countries where low incomes (less than $1 per day) make it difficult to access food.

Session panellist Professor Rudy Rabbinge of CGIAR Science Council believes that global food security is possible, but we must find better ways of ensuring access to food is improved by employing the best possible agricultural practices, and removing the temptation towards biomass production, stating ‘fuel security with biomass is an illusion’.

Dr Akinwumi Adesina from the DFID funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) argued for the need for ‘locally directed change’. He thinks this is possible through a small-holder based green revolution. But first, new sets of policy instruments need to be developed to support smallholder farmers to access new agricultural technologies, reduce the impact of climate change and adopt sustainable land-use practices. More sustainable land-use practices might allow farmers in Africa to benefit from global carbon markets.

The panel acknowledged that over the last three to four decades agriculture has suffered from serious under investment. Dr Julie Flood of CABI highlighted the important role improved plant health could play in improving agricultural productivity in developing countries. An estimated third of production is lost annually from pests and diseases. She went onto to outline how CABI’s plant health initiative works with partners to deliver in-country plant health advice to farmers. This type of initiative is set to be crucial for the development of a knowledge-based ‘green revolution’ in developing countries.

Other panellists included: Dr Andrew Daudi (Chair), Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Research and Food Security, Malawi; His Excellency Joaquim Chissano, Former President of the Republic of Mozambique; and Dr Richard Tingem Munang, United Nations Environment Programme.

More conference blogs:

Better farm productivity is not enough – We need to “talk more about losing less”
Food Security – helping to achieve MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Chris Whitty talks about some of the global challenges in food security at the recent CABI Global Summit: Food Security in a Climate of Change, London October 19-21 2009

The DFID funded Fisheries Management Science Programme (FMSP) has completed a number of research projects that show how fisheries contribute to food security in developing countries. Fish are said to provide the main source of animal protein to about one billion people globally. In low income food deficient countries (LIFDCs) they make up 22% of animal protein consumption. In these countries small scale fisheries are hold particular importance for food security. 95% of the 38 million people employed in fisheries worldwide are in developing countries.

Research has found that small scale fishers do not usually sell on their catch until their own subsistence levels have been met. The amount that is kept is relatively constant, and not governed by the size or the value of the catch. Subsistence remains a priority to the majority of people in developing countries, and it is important that their livelihoods are protected and sustained.

The nutritional value of fish is well known by most people. Fish are a good source of protein, micro nutrients and essential fatty acids. It provides a valuable balance to the diets of those people in developing countries who have a predominantly carbohydrate-based diet. Indigenous fish, which are often eaten whole, can also provide an important source of calcium and other micronutrients.

FMSP has undertaken a number of projects that have successfully increased the food security benefits to poor people from small-scale fisheries. For instance, FMSP identified a number of management strategies to improve the management strategies of inland fisheries. This project focused on self-recruiting species, which by definition do not require regular and repeated re-stocking. However, the restocking of collected juveniles and screening pond entrances are just some of the strategies used to ensure that the food security benefits of fish are sustained.

The sustainability of existing fish stocks are undoubtedly under threat due to global population growth. Many fish stocks are now overfished and unproductive, often making fish expensive. As a result there are increasingly competing demands on fishery resources. Local fishers often have to compete with industrial fishing boats, and frequently lose out on previously reliable fish resources. This has serious implications for their food security, and makes the protection of small scale fishers’ access rights important.

FMSP has been working with people in developing countries to address some of the conflicts over resources and access to them. For example, a project in northern Mozambique helped to establish a three mile exclusion zone where industrial fleets were banned from fishing. This ended an ongoing conflict between local small-scale fishers and industrial boats over gear entanglement.

There is clearly a need to ensure that fishers continue to provide a source of food security for millions of people worldwide, especially in developing countries, where fish provides subsistence and nutritional balance. There must be continued efforts to ensure fish stocks are managed appropriately, production increased, and small-scale fishers supported in conflicts over access to fishing resources.

You can find out more about the FMSP on R4D and through the projects own website: http://www.fmsp.org.uk

Consumers and policymakers are often unaware of the environmental and social impacts associated with their choice of food. The concept of ‘food miles’ is often associated with the argument that it is best to buy goods that have travelled the least distance. Long-distance transport of food is linked to increased transport emissions.

DFID funded research ‘Fair Miles? Weighing environmental and social impacts of fresh produce exports from Sub-Saharan Africa to the UK’ has shown that the correlation between food miles and emissions is not always fair. Especially when looked at in context.

High value produce from Africa, especially flowers and horticulture that are air-freighted, are being singled out as being forms of unsustainable consumption. But in terms of development and poverty reduction, the inclusion of sub-Saharan Africa in these high-value markets has proved a success. The UK imports over £200 million worth of fresh fruits and vegetables from sub-Saharan African countries, and many of these rely on the UK market to support their domestic industry.

Air freight is a significant contributor to food transport emission in the UK. 1.5% of imported fruits and vegetables arrive in air transportation but that portion produces 50% of all emissions from fruit and vegetable transportation. An air-freighted kilogram of green beans from sub-Saharan Africa to the UK has the same level of carbon emissions as 177 sea-freighted kilograms.

As part of this study researchers carried out a life cycle analysis to compare UK and Kenyan energy use to the farmgate and UK port of entry. This analysis looks critically at the potential trade-offs of food miles and their potential for positive outcomes.

For example, there an estimated 1-1.5 million people whose livelihoods depend on the supply chain linking African soil and consumption in the UK. This in conjunction to the fact that air freight of fresh fruit and vegetables accounts for less than 0.1% of total emissions from transport of UK fruit and vegetables. From a development perspective this means that air freight from sub-Saharan Africa is a relatively efficient ‘investment’ by the UK in allocating its carbon emissions.

However, life cycle analysis also shows that food imports to the UK have other environmental implications for producer countries that must be considered. Research has shown that production of green beans from Africa to the UK uses the equivalent amount of water to supply 13 million Kenyan people for one year. This is an interesting fact given that Kenya is classed as a ‘chronically water scarce’ country. Nevertheless, given the poor state of water resource management and infrastructure in Kenya, water used for agriculture is not actually diverted from the population.

This research clearly shows that there is a great deal to consider on the issue of food miles. If you would like to know more the project document is available on R4D.

Greenpeace funded research undertaken at the University of Aberdeen has shown how agriculture holds a number of solutions for climate change. Many people blame modern farming practices for accelerating climate change. However, this research suggests that it might be time to stop pointing the finger, and work proactively with agriculture to mitigate climate change.

Research has shown that agriculture can play an important role in reducing all of its direct emissions through the process of mitigation. Mitigation involves the sequestration of carbon, and can be achieved through a number of different agricultural practices. For instance, rotating crops with legumes such as peas and beans helps fix nitrogen in the soil and reduce reliance on fertilizers. While reducing tillage helps restore the carbon content of degraded soils, limiting soil disturbance which leads to the release of carbon.

There is no doubt that agriculture produces a significant level of the world’s greenhouse gases (GHG’s) (between 16.8-32.2%). The main GHG’s associated with agriculture are nitrous oxide and methane. Direct emissions come from livestock and the soil, and indirectly from fertilizer production, fossil fuel use and changes in land use, particularly associated with deforestation.

Livestock are the main source of methane, and this is a growing concern given the ever increasing demand for meat in developing countries. These countries have the greatest increase in meat consumption in recent years, increasing by 77% from 1960-1990. Three sources contribute 88% of this increase in developing countries: soil nitrous oxide emissions, methane from livestock and biomass burning.

A striking example of how agriculture may be leading to the acceleration of climate change can be found in Brazil. Between 2001-2004 93,700 square kilometres of rainforest were destroyed to make way for cattle and high energy feed crops. This kind of practice is of great concern because rainforests play a crucial role in the sequestration of carbon. A short term goal must be too stop deforestation, and this deserves major political attention.

China and India are guilty of dramatically increasing their fertilizer and manure use to meet the demands of rapid population growth. However, it is very difficult for other countries to criticise these intensive practices. Farming in many developed countries plays an equal if not more dominant role in climate change acceleration.

The role agriculture plays in accelerating climate change is a global problem. The evidence exists to show that agriculture can play a positive role in mitigation significantly reduce the GHG’s it produces. This is a global problem, which requires global solutions. We cannot expect developing countries, particularly those with tropical forests, to fight this issue alone. Every country and region must understand the role agriculture plays in accelerating climate change, and begin to implement those practices that can significantly reduce its impact.

R4D contains a wealth of knowledge on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security.

Communicating knowledge: how and why researchers publish and disseminate their findings is a new report published by the Research Information Network (RIN). It explores a number of important issues in the communication of research.  The report looks specifically at how researchers publish their work, and their motivation for publishing their findings through different formats.

Researchers are increasingly being pulled in different directions on how they should publish their research. Undoubtedly, peer reviewed journals remain the central mechanism used by UK researchers to publish their findings. However, there are increasingly new and less formal formats available to academics through web-based social networking tools. These tools hold much promise for researchers as part of a strategic communication strategy. However, many researchers find their research communication is dominated by the demands of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

The RAE plays a pivotal role in researcher’s decisions to publish a vast majority of their work in scholarly journals. The rating system the RAE applies to journals also means that some journals are favoured over others.

The RAE system acts as a disincentive for many researchers to disseminate their research in any format other than scholarly journals. This situation is only likely to get worse. This is because both the RAE and research institutions use publication rates in journals as the means to measure research performance. This also influences which work researchers choose to cite, and gives a preference for research by those researchers publishing in the most highly rated journals.

The RIN report outlines the need for researchers to receive better guidance on the value of different communications channels. Many researchers are not familiar with the different options open to them, and the specific value of communicating their research in different ways. Nevertheless, it is crucial that researchers also become highly strategic communicators to ensure their work has the greatest possible impact. R4D provides invaluable advice for researchers through its CommsCorner blog.

Funders and policy makers also play an important role in ensuring that future research is communicated more widely. They should be looking to ensure that all formats of research communication are valued in the assessment of researchers’ performance.

Scholarly journals are an invaluable source of knowledge, and they will continue to play a central role in research dissemination. However, the RIN report suggests that researchers and their institutional arrangements must be more adaptive, and able to meet different audience’s demands and needs in more flexible ways.

If you feel you can offer a perspective on the issues outlined in the report then please comment. We are particularly keen to hear from people in developing countries, and would like to pose two questions :

1. How accessible is UK based research in your respective countries?
2. What format, bearing in minds your own specific needs, would you like to see UK research communicated through?

Ghana can proudly boast of a strong national emphasis on education. Access to education is seen as a fundamental human right, as well as a key element in the national development strategy. Much of this countries aspiration to become a middle income country by 2020 rests on attaining a good level of educational access.

A highly educated population is seen as the means to provide the human resource base for accelerated development. This assumption is based on the knowledge that no country has become a significant player in the global economy without a critical mass of literacy and numeracy in the population. For this to take place a countries population must have substantial access to post basic education. So how does Ghana intend to meet this challenge, and is the current system on the right track?

In 1992, the new Ghanaian constitution made nine-year basic education mandatory. It called for the provision of free, compulsory and universal education. In 1995, the ‘free compulsory universal basic education’ (FCUBE) reforms were introduced. The programme had an immediate impact, but also faced a number of problems.

For example, management weaknesses at school and system level are said to have undermined some of its potential impact. Weaknesses also began to appear on the demand side of participation, especially with older children.

These problems have highlighted the need to (i) ensure that basic education is provided in ways that motivate children and parents to participate through to the end of mandatory education, and (ii) promote school and system management to enhance efficiency and affordability.

Two initiatives have been developed to try and meet these needs. The first has seen the push towards a decentralised education and management system. This is intended to bring about a more efficient and responsive system at the district, community and school level. However, evidence suggests that it has also had the unintended consequence of causing further disparity between communities in the provision and quality of education.

The second initiative is the capitation grant scheme. This rewards schools approximately $3 per enrolled child. Initial result suggested the scheme had been a massive success in raising enrolment levels. In fact, enrolments went up by 17% at the basic educational level, but this was mostly concentrated at grade 1 level.

Nevertheless, the scheme has seen some schools short changed, finding they collected more funding under the old system. It is also thought that the scheme may not provide the long term motivation to sustain higher enrolments.

Despite an active educational agenda, research has shown that patterns of educational access in Ghana are still a cause for concern. For instance, boys are still more likely to stay longer in school than girls. The enrolment rate for girls aged 11-16 is 8% lower than boys of the same age. There is also evidence that poor children are likely to enter primary school at an older age compared to children from more financially secure families. Research has also found that children in rural areas are far less likely to be enrolled in school than children in urban areas.

The sad reality is that those children who are not able to attend school or drop out do so because of economic reasons. Many poor children play a vital role in contributing to the family income, and their enrolment in school is often reliant on them also having a job. This places a great deal of pressure on these children, and if Ghana’s education policy is going to be successful then this kind of reality needs closer attention.

This article was based on research carried out by the DFID funded Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE). The project document is available on R4D through the following link: CREATE

DFID funds a number of different organisations who are trying to help researchers communicate their work more effectively. This week we feature resources from two of them, SciDev.net and INASP’s AuthorAid project.

Through their website SciDev.net gives policymakers, researchers, the media and civil society both information and a platform on which to explore how science and technology can reduce poverty, improve health, and raise standards of living around the world. They also build developing countries’ capacity for communicating science and technology through regional networks of committed individuals and organisations, practical guidance, and specialist workshops.

For those who cannot attend or set up a SciDev workshop, a great place to start is SciDev.Net’s series of practical guides. The latest guide, ‘How researchers can stand up for science’ looks at how the media reports science and gives researchers pointers on how to fight poor science coverage. Other guides include ‘Communicating statistics and risk’, and ‘Planning and writing a science story’.

AuthorAid aims to bring people together to share problems and solutions, and is setting up a mentoring project that will give those with experience a chance to share what they’ve learned with colleagues who are just starting out. AuthorAid are encouraging potential mentors to register with them, in particular experienced researchers with track records of publishing, people who are diplomatic and can encourage and support
early-career researchers in developing countries, and who are committed, enthusiastic and not looking for academic gain.

Developing country researchers looking for mentors should also register, and then can search the list of people offering to mentor and contact them.

Conferences are an important way to share new research findings and connect with other researchers. The ‘poster session’ is now a mainstay of the conference circuit, but producing an effective scientific poster is actually quite an art.

Colin Purrington of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has written an entertaining and useful guide to making better posters. (Microsoft has even adapted his guide for their forum site – by editing out all the personality…)

In addition to including a lot of basic good sense and practical guidance that you will find useful next time you make a poster, there are even tips for the procrastinators who left it until the last minute:

If your poster is really bad, you might consider attaching a bag of sweets or crisps to the easel to lure visitors. If you situate yourself a few posters away, you can then pounce on people as they help themselves. If they have taken your food offering, they will feel obliged to stay and talk to you.

One tip suggests attaching mini-recorders to the poster where appropriate. That would be great if your poster was about music or birdsong for instance, but could also include comments from other researchers in your team, or end-users comments in their own words and voice.

He also encourages poster-makers to think about some important but unexpected issues. When you are choosing your colours, for example, do you keep in mind that a significant portion of your viewers (roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women) are colour blind?

Purrington reminds people to use patterns as well as colours on graphics to ensure that colourblind people can follow your graphs and charts, but if you work in an office you might also wander the halls until you find someone who thinks the Ishihara circle below contains the number 70 and ask them to review your poster for you.

Given the competing demands on everyone’s time at a conference, and the fact that the poster session is often scheduled at the same time as, erm, refreshments, why not make a mini-poster on a sticky label and wear it in the bar next to your nametag? One of Purrington’s readers did just that and posted it on Slideshare. It must have been a great conversation starter. (*See below for an explanation of what she was researching if you can’t work it out!)

Have you found poster sessions to be a useful way to share your research?
If you put your posters on your website after the conference, do they get hits?
What’s your best tip for making a better scientific poster?

*I am looking at how different bacteria in wastewater treatment processes degrade estrogens. Hopefully if we discover removal mechanisms we could enhance removal of estrogens in wastewater treatment, reducing environmental impacts (can feminise male fish at 1 ng/L).

As websites have become more complex, the length of web addresses (URLs) has grown, and they have become increasingly unwieldy. Hot links and hyperlinks are fine if you are sure your reader will be online, but sometimes using a link that can be noted down easily and visited at a later date is more appropriate. Short URLs are good for printed publicity material, and also useful when including web links in Twitter, where messages can only be 140 characters long.

The website Tiny URL converts URLs of any length into much smaller ones (20 characters on average). It’s very simple to use, and has two great new features. You can now customise your tiny URL so that it is memorable rather than random. In addition, at the time you create your tiny URL you can activate a tracking option that will enable you to gather statistics about how many people click on the URL that you’ve created.

To make a tiny URL go to http://www.tiny.cc/. Simply paste into the box your long URL and click on the orange ‘Tiny it!’ button. Your new tiny URL of five random characters (for example http://tiny.cc/Px1My) will appear.

But before you click, why not customise your tiny URL? The standard URL for R4D’s Communications Corner is http://www.research4development.info/communicationsCorner.asp, but we made a tiny URL for the same page: http://tiny.cc/CommsCorner by putting ‘CommsCorner’ in the ‘Custom’ box. (Note you can also use www.tiny.cc/ as the prefix.) One warning: Don’t experiment with your preferred Custom phrase – once you’ve used it, it’s gone and you can never delete or edit it! Yes, I did lose one myself.

Finally, why not use tiny URLs to track your traffic statistics for particular marketing efforts? Note: you must set this up immediately after you create the tiny URL. After you click the ‘Tiny it!’ button, a line will appear that says: ‘Track how many people click your tiny link here’. Clicking the ‘here’ hyperlink at that time will take you to a traffic stats web page for that tiny URL. Save the address of that webpage somewhere safe, and you can return and check how many people have used your tiny URL. Each tiny URL has its own statistics page (with unique ID and code).

I’m going to make all the links in the R4D monthly e-newsletter tiny URLs from now on. A click will still take the reader straight to the news story or new document on R4D, but I will be able to see which links interest people most and try to respond. If you don’t already receive the newsletter you can sign up here.

Have you used Tiny URLs or other URL-shrinking systems?
Can you recommend especially appropriate ways to use them?
Have you used them to track your click stastics?

We often lament the lack of good ‘development’ stories in the media. Stories of hope and success, stories that try to focus on some of the issues that are difficult to explain or not the flavour of the moment.

To encourage and support this kind of writing DFID and the Guardian newspaper have teamed up for a second year of the International Development Journalism competition. The challenge, which had separate categories for amateur and professional writers, was to write a 650–1,000-word feature on one of the 16 chosen themes:

• Access to information
• Climate change
• Deforestation
• Education for street children
• Family planning in the developing world
• Green revolution?
• HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria co-infection
• Improving food security in eastern Africa
• Pastoralism as a viable way of life
• Rehabilitation of child workers
• Safe and unsafe abortion in the developing world
• Social inclusion
• The role of the media
• Tuberculosis (TB) and TB/HIV co-infection
• Water and sanitation
• Women’s rights

The short-list of 40 stories – 20 amateur, 20 professional – was published yesterday in the Guardian. Have a look – and think about what you might help a journalist write about next year!

Most researchers working in international development aim to influence policymakers, and list them as their key target audience. Research communications advisers encourage researchers to consider using new pathways to reach those policymakers. Directness can be effective, but there’s more than one way to get to your destination and sometimes the scenic route is the most memorable one.

Reaching the general public is always tricky, but getting the public to support the policy change that you are advocating – indeed making the public your advocates – can be remarkably effective, especially when elections are looming. The public can also be great advocates when your target is a business – perhaps a pharmaceutical company? – rather than a politician. The customer is always right, after all.

This week saw a very effective – and very funny – example of consumer power at work. The issue was not about international development, but it did aim to persuade an international business to change its behaviour – specifically the ways it treats customers. Canadian musician Dave Carroll had an expensive and beloved guitar badly damaged while flying between Halifax, Canada, and Nebraska, USA. He even had the added insult of actually witnessing the baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare airport throwing the band’s guitars around on the tarmac while loading them. After a year of persuing his claim for compensation through a web of customer services teams he gave up and decided to turn his rotten experience into something positive. He wrote a light-hearted and catchy song about it, made a funny video, and uploaded it to YouTube. The video went viral, catching the imagination of people around the world, and within three days it had earned more than 1.3 million views. (The number of views went up by 65,000 while I wrote this blog.) United Airlines had the good grace to acknowledge that their customer service had been inadequate (to put it mildly), announcing that the video had ‘struck a chord’ with them, and that they would be using it in future in-house training sessions.

We don’t all have the talent to match this feat, but innovative development researchers are working with performers to harness the power of art, music and social media to spread their message. In April this year Malaria No More celebrated World Malaria Day by teaming up with actor Ashton Kutcher and journalist Larry King of CNN. The two had a contest to see who could be the first to sign up a million Twitter followers – the winner to donate 10,000 bednets to the campaign. Guess who won?

Next week in R4D’s Communications Corner Podium blog we’ll hear from William Mapham, Director of Communications and Advocacy at the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit, University of Witwatersrand. They are partners in the DFID research programme consortium ‘Research and Capacity Building in Reproductive and Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries’, and ran a very interesting campaign in South Africa using mobile phone texting on World Aids Day last year. Sign up for R4D’s Communications Podium blog to make sure you don’t miss William’s post, and let us know about your experiences too!

Have you worked with artists to help promote your messages to new audiences?
Are you using social media sites to reach new people and say new things?
What have you learned about using these new tools?

Monitoring and evaluating our communications work is one of the most difficult tasks we face. The key is getting appropriate outputs and indicators into the logframe – and therefore into the research process – from the beginning. Easier said than done.

A team from the Center for Communication Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has produced an excellent Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Health Information Products and Services. It covers information products specifically rather than the whole breadth of communications activities that DFID-funded researchers engage in, but explicitly recognises that information products are just one part of the package, and covers that area very well indeed.

If you don’t work in health don’t let the name of the guide put you off. While it was produced with the help of HIPNET (Health Information and Publications Network) and the examples are from the health sector, researchers from other sectors will find it equally useful. In the few places that the word ‘health’ even appears in either their M&E framework or the 29 indicators, any other sector could be substituted and all the guidance would apply just as strongly. Not every example or product will apply to every project – the framework allows you to look at the whole menu and choose what is most appropriate for your own work.

While the authors describe their target audience as programme staff, M&E teams, and information professionals working in international health, if you are playing any role in planning your programme’s logframe outputs and indicators you will find this guide useful – even inspirational!

Engaging with the general public is something that many researchers find difficult, and for a variety of reasons. In 2006 the Royal Society asked 1,485 research scientists in higher education institutes (working mainly in clinical medicine, non-clincial biosciences, and engineering) about their attitudes towards public engagement. The goal of the study was to figure out how to reward scientists for engaging with the public. The study asked the scientists what they were already doing, what they would like to do, what could be done to make it easier for them, and what incentives would encourage them to engage more with the public.

The study, Science Communication, found that non-government organisations, writers and documentary makers, and general journalists were considered by scientists to be the least important audiences. The main reason that scientists weren’t engaging was that they felt they had to spend more time on their research.

Bringing more money into the department was the top incentive to engage – 81% said it would encourage them a great deal or to some extent to undertake more public engagement. Grants that covered staff time were also important (78%), and awards or prizes for departments (56%) were preferred to awards for individuals (39%). In addition 61% said changes to the research assessment exercise to encompass public engagement activity would act as an incentive.

Encouragingly, 45% of people said they would like to spend more time engaging with the non-specialist public about science, although 41% said that it was fairly or very difficult to do so and 36% felt not at all or not very well equipped to do so. This is not surprising, given that 73% of respondents had had no training in communicating science to the general public.

But that all sounds a bit dry, doesn’t it? Don’t forget that engaging the public in science can actually be fun!

The small town of Lyme Regis, in Dorset on the south coast of England, is one of the key towns along the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Famous among small children and geologists alike for the abundance of fossils that can be found on the beach any day, the town’s Community Development Trust recently held their fourth Fossil Festival, this year celebrating the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth with an Evolution Rocks! theme. It started small in 2005, but this year a dozen different organisations and institutions were involved, including a team from the Natural History Museum, so visitors could listen to talks by top scientists or bring in a fossil they’d found on the beach and have it identified. Artists and musicians joined in to make it a real celebration, and the nearly 16,000 visitors and schoolchildren all went home with a smile on their face, having learned something new about just how exciting science can be.

In the world of marketing an idea or practice that is spreading fast and in ways that could not have been planned is going ‘viral’. Blogging must surely qualify, but to those researchers whose funders are enthralled with the idea of blogging but at the same time have no realistic idea of how much work it is or what it can and cannot achieve, blogging can feel more like a nasty rash.

There is no doubt that there is an active community blogging away on every topic under the sun, so before you are persuaded to start your own blog, why not dip your toes into a world that is already buzzing? If your aim is to share the results and challenges of your research, start off by contributing comments to other people’s blogs. Start by finding out what blogs already exist in your area of work – search online, but don’t forget to ask around amongst your colleagues. Make it a team effort, with everyone following two or three blogs for a while until you can decide which ones are right for you. You can also use a Google Alert to notify you when any blog mentions a topic that you are interested in.

Asking around will get you good recommendations, but also search for sites that list a number of blogs in a particular area. For the sciences you might try ScienceBlogs (I like Not Rocket Science), BadScienceBlogs, Wikio’s list of most-referenced science blogs, or the posse list on BadScience. You never know what you’ll come across. A post last month on BadScience was called ‘What would you say to people from the developing world who use science to make decisions, but don’t necessarily always have a lot of time, or know a lot about it? (The author, Ben Goldacre, had been invited to facilitate a couple of sessions with developing country civil servants who advise their governments on science, and particularly on science that informs policy and purchasing decisions, and focusing on how people might try and mislead them with science). Now that’s a topic that every DFID-funded researcher could have said something about!

It’s a two-way street. DFID would like researchers to publicise the results of their work more widely, and newspapers like the Guardian would like more and better stories.

For the second year, DFID and the Guardian have teamed up to encourage journalists – both professionals and amateurs – to cover the issues that matter to the developing world. 

Monday 22 June is the deadline for entries to the international development journalism competition, which must be feature articles between 650 and 1,000 words long. The 16 best writers (eight amateur, eight professional) will be selected from a longlist of around 40 entrants, all of whom will have their articles published online at guardian.co.uk.

The 16 finalists will be flown to a developing country to research a new assignment. The finalist pieces will then be published in two Guardian newspaper supplements, after the announcement of the two winners at an awards ceremony in November 2009.

Writers must choose one of the themes below, all of which DFID supports and funds:

• Access to information
• Climate change
• Deforestation
• Education for street children
• Family planning in the developing world
• Green revolution?
• HIV/AID, TB and malaria co-infection
• Improving food security in East Africa
• Pastoralism as a viable way of life
• Rehabilitation of child workers
• Safe and unsafe abortion in the developing world
• Social inclusion
• The role of the media
• Tuberculosis and HIV/TB co-infection
• Water and sanitation
• Women’s rights

Read last year’s winning entries for inspiration, then why not send your favourite journalists some article suggestions today?

Presentations are a great way to share the results of your research, and a fact of life for most researchers. Putting together a good presentation is a lot of work, but often the same amount of work has to go into a presentation for a small event as for a big conference. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to share that presentation far and wide?

Slideshare is a website that does just what it says. Anyone can join and upload and share their presentations. You can use many different formats, includings pdf, OpenOffice, Powerpoint, and Microsoft Office, and you can add and synchronise audio files too. After loading your presentation, just send your colleagues all over the world the url, and they can watch it wherever they are. If your file is headings and bullet points only, you can record your talk and load it too, or else amend your original presentation to include new or extra information for the online version.

It’s a great compliment when your colleagues ask you for a copy of your presentation, but instead of having to email a large file to a lot of people, you can load the presentation before your talk, and include the Slideshare url at the end, so that everyone can watch it or download it in their own time. Researchers browsing the web for information will also find your file, and share it with other people. If you’ve invested in some good graphics that really tell your story you will soon see them popping up in other presentations too – mission accomplished!

Slideshare can also be used to share presentations privately, rather than with the public in general. So if you are preparing an event with colleagues far away, you can easily share work-in-progress with each other, and access it wherever you are. And if you want to keep a collection of all your presentations (or those of your whole research project) online for reference, just create a ‘My Slidespace’ page like this one we made for R4D. The world will come to you!