Tag Archives: outreach

I’ve been trying to warn about “fake news” since 2004

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Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both examples of and recommendations for preventing folklore, rumors and urban myths from interfering with development and aid/relief efforts and government initiatives. And for years, I felt like the lone voice in the wilderness on this subject. It was almost my master’s thesis project, but while I could find examples of widespread misunderstanding and misinformation campaigns interfering with relief and with relief and development activities, and government initiatives, including public health initiatives, I could not get enough people to go on record to talk about these circumstances and how they were addressing such. For a year, I contacted numerous organizations, particularly organizations promoting women’s health and access to abortion, trying to get them to talk about how these misinformation campaigns were affecting them, but if they replied at all to my emails or phone calls, they said they didn’t want to bring more attention to the problem, even if that attention was in an academic paper that people outside the institution may never read.

I went with another subject for my Master’s project, but I had gathered a lot of publicly-available information, so I shared it all on my web site, and I have kept it updated over the years as my time has allowed. I have always easily found many examples of myths and misinformation creating ongoing misunderstandings among communities and cultures, preventing people from seeking help, encourage people to engage in unhealthy and even dangerous practices, and cultivating mistrust of people and institutions. I easily have found examples that had lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others for no reason other than something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, to legislators introducing laws to address something that doesn’t exist, and influencing elections, long before such finally got noticed because of Brexit and the USA November 2016 elections.

In my original web pages, I said that this subject was rarely discussed, and for more than a decade, that was the truth: while I could find all of those examples, it was very difficult to find any online resources or published resources outside of academic papers about how to address or prevent misinformation campaigns designed to interfere with a relief or development effort, public health campaign, etc. Where was the practical info on how to deal with this? It was few and far between. For many years, mine was the only web site tracking such.

How did I get interested in this subject? I noticed stories my friends and family told often turned out not to be true, everything from spiders or snake eggs found in a jacket of a friend of a cousin that lives in another state, to why a local store closed, to something they had heard about happening on a TV talk show but hadn’t actually seen themselves. Then, while attending Western Kentucky University for my undergrad degree, I took a very popular class, Urban Folklore 371, where we discussed these stories, how they were spread, how the story changes over time and why such stories are believed. I was hooked on the psychology of rumor-spreading.

When I worked at a United Nations agency from 2001 to 2005, I made a joke to a colleague about the outrageous mythologies about the UN that so many people believed back in the USA – I’m not going to repeat them here, on this blog, but they are easy to find online. She gave me a confused look and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I showed her various web sites that promote this misinformation. She stood there, with her mouth open and eyes wide, staring at the outrageous graphics and text. “Is this a joke?” she asked. No, I replied, this is very real. I showed her more. “I can’t believe this!” she said. I explained that we could stand there all day with me showing her these sites, and these were just ones in the USA – I had no idea how many there were based in other countries, in other languages. And I admit I was starting to get angry, because not only did this seasoned UN staff member not know about this, no one I worked with at the UN had ever heard of these myth-spreading web sites. Conspiracy theories, pre-social media, were already affecting our work, yet, I seemed to be the first person to be talking about it, at least at my agency.

We have a saying in English: closing the barn door after the horses are already out. It means you are too late in trying to address an issue. Now, all these many years after trying to sound the alarm, I fear that there are entire generations of people that will now never be convinced that global climate change is real and devasting to communities, particularly to poor communities, or that will never believe that vaccinations do NOT cause autism nor infertility, or that will never believe that condoms can prevent HIV, or that will never accept fluoride in their water because they believe too many outrageous things I can’t even begin to list here, and on and on. I fear these generations are lost forever in having basic scientific literacy. And I fear that if we don’t make a concentrated, sustained effort on educating young people about science and how to evaluate information they are hearing and reading, more people will die, more communities will be devastated, more lives will be shattered.

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A lead from a friend online is still a lead from a friend

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When you see a list of how people find out about volunteering opportunities, you will often see the number one reference, by far, as from someone else already involved in the group. That gets categorized as word of mouth.

You might also see other highly-scoring references, like from a community of faith or from a local newspaper. And very low on the list of ways people got leads for volunteering will probably be the organization’s web site or Facebook.

BUT WAIT!!

There’s a big problem with the question and the way people were given to answer on these surveys.

For instance, I may have been referred to an organization to volunteer by a friend VIA FACEBOOK. So, is the reference from a friend, word-of-mouth, or Facebook? Which category does it go into?

I may have been referred to an organization via a newspaper’s FACEBOOK PAGE. So, who gets the credit – the newspaper or Facebook?

I hear a lot of people still dismissing the Internet as a tool for volunteer recruitment and they base it on things like this survey from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in the UK. But you need to be VERY cautious about such surveys. Remember: we think of messages on social media from friends as messages from friends, or from a church or temple, or from a newspaper, not from the platform itself. We might think of a message on Twitter from a newspaper as a message from the newspaper, not Twitter. If a survey asking volunteers how they heard about a service opportunity doesn’t also ask, for instance, in what context friends talked about the volunteering activity – face-to-face in a social setting, in a phone conversation (yes, people still have those), etc. – you can’t make assumptions about how that referral happened, that it must have happened face-to-face.

Indeed, word-of-mouth, in a traditional face-to-face setting or via a social media platform – remains the number one marketing tool for MOST things, not just volunteer recruitment. I’ve witnessed no better example of this recently than the reaction to Black Panther, one of the biggest grossing movies ever here in the USA. I have seen a huge number of people among my online friends post testimonials on Facebook about this movie, and responses from their friends saying they are going to go now based on that feedback. The people commenting have ranged from the wife of a local pastor here in my tiny town, both white and over 50, to friends that are teachers all over the USA. But credit doesn’t go to Facebook for the reference – it goes to the friends.

But with THAT said, here’s another consideration: the more sincere a word-of-mouth testimonial is, online or face-to-face, the more effective it will be in motivating friends. The more it sounds scripted, the more likely it won’t have as much effect. If a volunteer is sharing how great it is to volunteer somewhere, and is sharing that info – online or face-to-face – in a sincere moment of spontaneity and honesty and excitement, it’s going to have a much more impact than a statement an organization has given the volunteer to share with friends. A volunteer sharing a scripted message that an organization has asked them to isn’t going to have nearly the same impact – if it has any at all.

And one more thing: if you haven’t seen Black Panther, you totally need to ASAP. It’s awesome!

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Press relations tip from a person I loathe

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There is an activist that I loathe, a spokesperson for causes that go against everything I believe in. When I would hear or see him speak, my blood would boil. I’m not going to say his name because I do not want to give what he stands for any spotlight whatsoever.

Before he passed away, he was everywhere in the media here in the USA: in newspaper articles, in TV programs, on the radio. Some days, I saw him multiple times across networks. And I would seethe and wonder: why do reporters and producers call this man all the time to comment on, well, anything at all? Why do they give him so much attention?

At some point, I heard a press person be asked this very question. And he said something along these lines, “Because he will always, always return our calls, within minutes of our calling. He places a priority on talking to us. Whether it’s national network or a tiny newspaper in a small town, he always talks almost immediately to any press person that asks for an interview or comment.”

It immediately made me think of all the times I told the Executive Director of wherever I was working that some reporter was on the phone, or had emailed, and wanted an interview or comment, and the agency head telling me “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to” or “Yeah, just give me the info, I’ll call” but she or he never did. I thought of how often I have had to BEG a senior staff member to do a requested interview, how I’ve offered to sit in on the interview and answer any questions the director may not know. And I thought about how, later, after not doing these interview requests, these same people will complain about lack of coverage from the press.

I worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival for two summers, the second time as the head of publicity, both times pre-Internet, and I got a lot of compliments about how much press coverage I was able to land for the shows. Someone asked me for my “secret”. And it was easy to answer: I treated the press as my customers. I would knock myself to get them absolutely anything they needed, no matter how tight the deadline. I also made sure, before the interview with the famous person, that the reporter had everything about the upcoming show that person would be in, with the key information – what, when, where and how to buy tickets – right up front. Whether it was Entertainment Tonight, the entertainment reporters from CNN, or a tiny community newspaper in Vermont, everyone got immediate callbacks, everyone got complete info, everyone got some kind of access, even if it wasn’t precisely, exactly the access they wanted. And I have to give kudos to the two Executive Directors I worked under, first Nikos Psacharopoulos and then Peter Hunt, both of whom would do absolutely any interview with the press they were asked to do, no matter how crazed they were with final rehearsals, no matter the absolutely horrid mood they were in.

Sure, some reporters were still hostile and wrote the negative stories they had every intention of writing before they ever called me. But for the most part, I really enjoyed working with the media at Williamstown, and I think they really enjoyed working with me, because they saw me as on their side – and never knew all the many things I was hoping they wouldn’t find out about and want to do a story on… I remain grateful that digital cameras nor camera phones existed at that time.

I realize this was more than 20 years ago, but I think it’s still the key to getting press coverage: treating the press as customers and making calling them back quickly a priority. Also, keep sending those “old fashioned” press releases: I still use them for nonprofits I work with, and they still work in getting coverage – or, at least, a mention.

One more lesson: the man I loathed also always had a message, always had something to say. He knew what his central message was for whatever media moment was offered. Some speakers get that naturally, but very often, communications managers have to brief and prep someone before an interview regarding such a central message. Executive Directors: listen to your communications manager, meet with them, work with them, and craft that central message well! The payoff for doing so is enormous.

Also see:

        • Basic Press Outreach for Not-for-Profit and Public Sector Organizations
          Like fundraising, press relations is an ongoing cultivation process. These are basic, low-cost/no-cost things you can do to generate positive attention from the media.
        • Daily, Mandatory, Minimal Tasks for Nonprofits on Facebook & Twitter
          There are a lot of nonprofits using Facebook and Twitter just to post to press releases. And if that’s how your nonprofit, NGO or government agency is using social media, then your organization is missing out on most of the benefits you could gain from such. Facebook, Twitter and other social media are all about engagement. This is a list of must-do social media tasks – these tasks take minutes, not hours.
        • Outreach Via the Internet for Mission-Based Organizations
          It’s more than just putting up a Web site; it involves finding and posting to appropriate Internet discussion groups, sending emails to current and potential customers, using online social networking… it’s pro-active, interactive and ongoing. Here’s how.
        • Your initiative should exploit UN days
          International days, weeks, years and decades, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly, offer excellent outreach opportunities for nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, charities, government initiatives and other agencies focused on improving and enriching communities and individuals, as well as protecting the environment.
        • For Schools: You Should Be Using Social Media. Here’s How.
          This advice talks not only about exactly what your school should be posting to social media, but the consequences of not doing so, as well how to handle tough questions and criticism. It also links to legal advice.
        • Getting More Viewers for Your Organization’s Online Videos 
          Videos are a great way to represent your organization’s work, to show you make a difference, to promote a message or action that relates to your mission, etc. But just uploading a video isn’t enough to attract an audience. This page on my site offers specific steps that will get more views for your organization’s videos on YouTube.
        • Where Are Your Organization’s FAQs?
          Reporters love FAQs – frequently asked questions and their answers. Are yours on your web site?
        • Handling Online Criticism
          Online criticism of a nonprofit organization, even by its own supporters, is inevitable. It may be about an organization’s new logo or new mission statement, the lack of parking, or that the volunteer orientation being too long. It may be substantial questions regarding an organization’s business practices and perceived lack of transparency. How a nonprofit organization handles online criticism speaks volumes about that organization, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. There’s no way to avoid it, but there are ways to address criticism that can help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting.
        • Lessons for online outreach to nonprofits, NGOs & charities
          From working with the nonprofit Knowbility in 2017 & 2018.
        • Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN
        • My consulting services regarding communications and community engagement

How schools & small governments should be using social media

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The days of everyone getting their information from one newspaper is over. Newspapers continue to disappear and most of those that are left don’t readily print school-related information anymore, like weekly lunch menus, sports scores, the dates and times of the Spring musical, etc. A growing number of people get their community information ONLY from social media. If your government agency, school or nonprofit isn’t posting to social media, you are leaving out that growing number of people.

Here’s the good news: you aren’t creating any new text to use social media. Rather, you are using information you already have prepared for other communications. If it’s public information, it needs to be on your mail social media accounts. Often, that means just cutting and pasting information from another platform.

I’ve added two new resources on my web site, one to help local governments to use social media, like Facebook, Twitter, etc., one to help schools to use social media:


Tips for small cities, towns and counties on using social media

To not be using social media to deliver information and to engage means you are denying critical information to much of your community and promoting an image of secrecy and lack of transparency. In fact, the lack of use of social media can be seen as your city council or county government trying to hide something, and even lead to rumors that are much harder to dispel than they would have been to prevent. This advice talks not only about exactly what your school should be posting to social media, but also how to handle tough questions and criticism.

 


Tips for schools on using social media

No excuses: your school needs to be using social media. Whether you are just K – 6 or all the way K – 12 or anything in between, your school MUST be using social media. To not be using it means you are denying critical information away from parents and the community.

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Your initiative should leverage UN days

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International days, weeks, years and decades, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly, offer excellent outreach opportunities for nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, charities, government initiatives and other agencies focused on improving and enriching communities and individuals, as well as protecting the environment. There is a commemorative day, as designated by the United Nations general assembly, for just about any subject you can think of. Here’s just a sample:

Cancer
Female Genital Mutilation
Women and Girls in Science
the power of radio 
Social Justice 
Wildlife
Women
Racial Discrimination
Poetry
Down Syndrome
Forests
Water		 Meteorology
Tuberculosis
Autism
Mine Awareness
Sport for Development and Peace
Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda
Health
Human Space Flight
Malaria
Tourism
Mountains
Migrants

and on and on and on. Now is a great time to look through the list and think about how you are going to leverage these days for your initiative’s mission.

You can use these designations to tie in your organization’s events and programs, through

  • issuing press releases about your work and how it relates to the day, week or year
  • posting social media messages that relate to the day, week or year’s theme
  • writing op-ed pieces for local media
  • blogging on a related topic, posting social
  • offering yourself for interviews to radio and TV
  • holding a special event that ties in with the day, week or year

If you mention these days, weeks, years, etc. on your blog and web site, and use the official Twitter tags for the events, you increase the chance of your organization coming to the attention of anyone doing a search online for information about these days, weeks, etc. and reaching an even wider audience.

For a list of these UN days, weeks, years and decades, see either this part of the UNESCO web site or this page by the UN Association of Canada. HOWEVER, note that, as of the start of December 2017, these calendars have not been updated with the 2018 designation. It’s not known of the UN will designate 2018 with any theme. The General Assembly has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition is 2016 to 2025, which means it’s still happening in 2018. The designation aims to trigger intensified action to end hunger and eradicate malnutrition worldwide, and ensure universal access to healthier and more sustainable diets for all people.

The International Decade for People of African Descent is 2015–2024, which means it’s also still being celebrated in 2018, as is the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, which is 2014–2024.

The decade of 2011–2020, also all still being celebrated, has four designations:

There’s also the International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures (2013-2022), which is designated by UNESCO, a UN initiative, but not the General Assembly. Rapprochement means reconciliation, increased understanding, restoration of harmony, agreement, cooperation or harmonization. The decade is meant to promote mutual understanding and reciprocal knowledge of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, and to foster dialogue for sustainable development and its ethical, social and cultural dimensions. The initiative offers a number of free resources you can use to promote the themes of the decade.

Also see:

Getting More Viewers for Your Organization’s Online Videos

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Videos are a great way to represent your organization’s work, to show you make a difference, to promote a message or action that relates to your mission, etc. But just uploading a video isn’t enough to attract an audience. Also, your time is precious – it takes a lot of work to produce and upload a video, so shouldn’t that work get a payoff with a lot of views with potential supporters, current clients, and others you want to reach?

Getting More Viewers for Your Organization’s Online Videos is a new page on my site that offers specific steps that will get more views for a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school or government agency’s videos on YouTube. Note that many of these tasks would be great for an online volunteer to undertake, with guidance from an appropriate staff member.

Also… have a look at my YouTube channel. There are dog videos!

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What Mad Men Can Teach Nonprofits & NGOs About Story-Telling

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I love the television show Mad Men. The characters and their storylines were immediately and continually compelling and surprising to me. The sets and costumes evoke ever-fading memories of my early childhood – I remember some of those outfits on my mother and the styles of kitchens in particular.

I’ve been rewatching Mad Men in the last few months, and I was struck by something I hadn’t remembered: how much I love the fictional advertising firm’s use of simple storytelling for clients in order to sell ideas. I am as spellbound as the pretend clients on the show during these sessions. With no Powerpoint presentation, no high tech, just words and maybe a still image, the advertising staff use compelling words, tone of voice, eye contact and subtle body language to sell concepts that evoke emotions so strong that, sometimes, clients tear up. It’s theater, without the clients knowing that it is, without the clients knowing there is acting happening. It’s the art of story-telling through talking.

Here are three examples of how effective the Mad Men low-tech approach could be:

Note that the first thing the ad person in these scenes does is set a mood, just by talking. You see moving images as they start pitching an idea, even though no moving images of whatever they are trying to sell are shown. Every time, they are telling a story, and you want to hear that story. You are intrigued, and you listen.

I have no idea how many times I have sat in an audience or meeting room and waited for someone to get the computer started, get the wireless network connected, get the software booted up, make sure the sound is working, and on and on, in order to start or continue telling me about some idea. By the time they begin, or continue, the room is often not in-the-moment anymore, and there’s nothing the presenter can do – the presentation can’t be altered based on the changed mood of the audience and the presentation can’t adjust the message to the moment.

I also have no idea how many times I’ve changed how I am going to do a workshop or presentation because of reading the room. I walked into a room to do a workshop and found just five people in my audience, so instead of turning on the overhead, I had everyone come up to the front of the room, we sat in a circle, I opened my laptop in case I needed to reference it, but I did a discussion instead of the lecture. We talked. I still did my presentation, but it didn’t feel like a presentation. It wouldn’t have worked with 50 people. As a result of experiences like this, I always ask to have a flip chart and markers in the room where I will present because I may suddenly find that we need to have a spontaneous brainstorming session in order for me to keep the room engaged and to ultimately sell the idea I’ve come to pitch to the group.

Mad Men reminds me of the importance of being able to not rely entirely on a pre-programmed presentation and technology, and instead, knowing what the heart of a message is, the key points, the essence, and being able to say such in a way that feels honest. Polish isn’t the most important thing – the substance and feeling of sincerity is, as well as a clear speaking voice. Yes, of course, I use visual aids and technology sometimes – but I always remember that it’s the message, not the tech, that needs to shine.

I’ll save my thoughts about the way Mad Men perfectly shows what women in the workplace face, even today, for another blog…

Also see:

schedule social media posts? use with caution

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I’ve been using social media before it was called social media: I was a heavy user of USENET newsgroups back in the 1990s, and moderated the soc.org.nonprofit group for a few years. USENET was all about interaction with others and networking – but in text-based formats. As a result of that experience, I learned early so, so much about using the Internet both for promotions and for engagement: it gave me terrific grounding for using modern social media tools (and least I think so). As a one-person shop with no permanent agency affiliation, no best selling book and no big media splash, I’ve done pretty well at attracting followers on both Twitter and Facebook.

I use tools like Hootsuite to pre-program tweets to Twitter and status updates to Facebook and GooglePlus, but I don’t overly-rely on those tools: I still take at least a couple of hours every week to scroll through those I follow on Twitter and to read updates, to retweet things, to reply to posts, etc. I also pick one of my Twitter lists every week to read through and do the same. I wish it was as easy to do that on Facebook, but that’s another blog…

That said, I do use Hootsuite to pre-program tweets and Facebook page posts. I do this days, weeks, even months in advance. And I’ve been doing something in the last several weeks that seems to attract a lot more likes, followers and interactions for me: choosing my own social media theme for a day, and programming posts, especially tweets, once an hour around that theme, for 4-5 hours on that one day.

Creating tweets and other social media messages around a theme for the day doesn’t require me to create new information: I choose themes based on pages on my web site and posts on my blog that I would love for people to visit or revisit. Some days, I tweet about the same web page or blog post four times, but always with different keywords and a different description.

Some of the day-long themes I’ve tweeted around:

  • ethics in international volunteering
  • how to get a job in or experience for a job in humanitarian aid and development
  • controversies regarding not paying interns
  • using Twitter
  • ethics in communications
  • safety in volunteer programs
  • resources regarding volunteer firefighters
  • virtual volunteering
  • competing online with breaking news
  • welcoming volunteers (and how you might be making them unwelcome)
  • digital/IT-related volunteering
  • conflict, free speech, reconciliation
  • social cohesion, building understanding

Your nonprofit, non-governmental organization, school, government agency or other mission-based initiative can do the same: look through your web pages that are focused on educating people about your cause or mission or reaching clients and potential clients in particular. Do you see themes emerging? What about UN international days that relate to the mission of your initiative – could you build a day-of-social-media-messaging around that theme?

On a related note, if you have an event, or an approaching program deadline, or some other time-sensitive information or announcement, don’t rely on just one tweet or one Facebook post to get the word out. You need to come up with reasons to post multiple times on Twitter, even in just one day, about a key event: each post could feature a different photo, a different keyword, and slightly different wording.

Oh, but doesn’t that mean followers keep reading the same message over and over? No. That’s because most people aren’t sitting and looking at one Facebook page or one Twitter feed all day long. I’m very lucky if one of my followers just happens to be looking at Twitter when I post – it’s very likely most WON’T be. For my followers to see a message, they either have to be staring at the screen the moment I post, to go specifically to my Facebook page or Twitter feed to read only my social media posts, to see the message when it’s reposted by someone else, or when it uses a keyword tag that they follow.

The only way scheduling messages for later posting to social media works, however, is if it’s coupled with live, in-the-moment interactions on social media: liking other people and agency’s content, responding to that content, asking questions regarding other people’s posts, etc. If I don’t show interest in the social media posts of others, why should they show interests in mind?

And whatever you do, do NOT use Twitter only as a gateway for your Facebook posts. No one is going to click on that truncated message on Twitter to read the rest of it on Facebook. It shows a profound laziness on your part.

Your nonprofit or government program should check out Reddit

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Reddit is USA-based web site for discussions on a huge variety of subjects and for rating web content. And it has a lot of potential as a tool for your program’s volunteer recruitment and awareness-building.

Most of the niche online communities I’m a part of are overwhelmingly female; that’s why I use Reddit, to provide some gender balance in my online life regarding nonprofits, community development, volunteerism, etc. It also helps me understand what people outside of the nonprofit and humanitarian world are saying about nonprofit and humanitarian issues.

According to citations on the Wikipedia page for Reddit, statistics from Google Ad Planner suggest that 74% of all Reddit users are male. In 2016 the Pew Research Center published research showing 67% of Reddit users are men; 71% of users who read news on the site are men. As of the end of 2016, Reddit is the only major social media platform that does not have a female majority user base. Users tend to be significantly younger than average with less than 1% of users being 65+. Reddit users also tend to be very tech savvy, using the very latest social media tools and knowing about, even creating, the latest tech trends. The Reddit community has gotten a lot of negative press, but it also has an extensive philanthropic reputation.

Content entries are organized by areas of interest called “subreddits”. It’s worth checking to see if your city has a subreddit – mine does – and posting your nonprofit’s events, volunteering opportunities and other public announcements there.

Other subreddits I frequent that you might want to check out and, perhaps, post to:

https://www.reddit.com/r/volunteer/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Philanthropy/

https://www.reddit.com/r/communityservice/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Charity/

https://www.reddit.com/r/nonprofit/

https://www.reddit.com/r/probono/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmeriCorps/

https://www.reddit.com/r/peacecorps/

https://www.reddit.com/r/InternationalDev/

https://www.reddit.com/r/humanitarian/

If you have used Reddit to recruit volunteers or build awareness about a particular issue, please share your experience in the comments below.

Also see:

ICTs to reach & educate at-risk communities

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Apps, social media, text messaging/SMS and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are already playing a crucial role in educating people regarding public health issues, reaching marginalized communities and helping those that may be targets of harassment and discrimination. But in all of these tech4good initiatives, the importance of safety and security for those doing the outreach and those in the target audience is critical. People trying to promote a tech4good initiative do not want the technology to be used by hostile parties to identify, track and target people based on their health, lifestyle or beliefs.

For those interested in using ICTs to reach marginalized communities, or those interested in how to communicate vital information about topics that are frowned-upon in religiously conservative communities, the new publication Pioneering HIV services for and with men having sex with men in MENA: A case study about empowering and increasing access to quality HIV prevention, care and support to MSM in a hostile environment, is well worth your time to read. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded this project, and the 48-page publication was produced by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and co-authored by Tania Kisserli, Nathalie Likhite and Manuel Couffignal. The publication includes two pages on how ICTs help to reach hidden communities threatened by police raids and rising homophobia in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region – for instance, how applications such as Grindr that are frequently accessed by men having sex with men (MSM) in the MENA region and provide virtual venues for disseminating information on HIV prevention, treatment and support services.”

The publication includes two pages on how ICTs help to reach hidden communities threatened by police raids and rising homophobia in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region – for instance, how applications such as Grindr that are frequently accessed by men having sex with men (MSM) in the MENA region and provide virtual venues for disseminating information on HIV prevention, treatment and support services.”

This is from the report (note that this is with British spellings):

In 2015, the partners of the MENA programme implemented a pilot online peer outreach project to reach more MSM, in partnership with the South East Asian Foundation B-Change Technology.

In order to improve the understanding of the online habits and behaviours of MSM, two anonymous web surveys were launched online to collect information among MSM (living in Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia), recruited via Facebook and instant messaging channels. The first survey assessed technology use and included questions about mobile devices and tech-based sexual networking. The second survey collected further data on social media behaviours, with questions about using social networks, interpersonal communications, and negative experiences online. The results confirmed the penetration of internet and mobile technologies in urban centres, and highlighted the widespread use by MSM of mainstream social networks (predominantly Facebook) and global gay dating apps, especially in the evening. The predominant website for sexual networking was reported to be Planet Romeo; the predominant smartphone app for sexual networking was Grindr. The results also revealed that while MSM use smartphone instant messaging (SMS and Whatsapp mainly) to communicate and chat with friends, they tend to use the telephone when communicating with health providers. Sexual networking among this cohort demonstrated a preference for web-based methods versus offline (public space) networking. A significant proportion of negative experiences using social media or apps was also reported, in particular cases of breach of confidentiality online.

Based on these findings, the partners designed a pilot information and communications technology (ICT)-based intervention. Experienced peer educators created avatars representing different profiles of beneficiaries, collectively designed an online peer outreach intervention and developed the corresponding standard operating procedures and M&E framework. This was identified as the most feasible output based on existing resources and ICT experience. Building the capacity of community groups for this intervention would result in more effective use of popular social media platforms for MSM-peer outreach activities. Local trainings of ‘online peer educators’ were organised to strengthen digital security, content creation systems, online outreach procedures, conduct of peer educators online, and M&E framework to measure the outcomes towards the HIV continuum of care.

The trained ‘online peer educators’ created ‘virtual peer educators’ accounts/profiles and contacted MSM though internet and social media in their respective countries, mainly on Facebook, Whatsapp, Grindr, Hornet, Planet Romeo, Badoo, Tango and Babel, and mostly during evening and night shifts. The objective was to contact MSM not reached by the usual outreach in public spaces, and hence continue expanding the package of prevention services available to MSM. They provided interpersonal communications on HIV and STIs, disseminated IEC materials online, encouraged them to take an HIV test and referred them to prevention services provided by the partner organisations, as well as public health services in their country.

This test phase lasted from July to September 2015 in Agadir, Beirut, Tunis and Sousse. The results were promising; during the month of September 2015, the six online peer educators of ASCS in Agadir for instance reached 546 MSM via chat rooms, websites, apps and instant messaging. They referred 148 MSM for an HIV test and 86 MSM for an STI consultation. During this period ASCS noticed an increase of number of MSM visiting the association to collect condoms and lubricant; ASCS peer educators appreciated this new type of outreach work compared to street outreach, the latter being uneasy due to growing harassment of police. Some challenges that peer educators faced online were similar to ‘traditional’ or face-to-face outreach work: high interest in sexual health, initially reluctance to visit association or uptake services, or to change risk behaviour.

“The virtual prevention pilot project has allowed us to reach a significant number of MSM, in particular those who remain hidden and aren’t reached through our outreach activities in the streets.” — peer educator and university student in Morocco

Some of the lessons learned from this pilot project:

  • Overall high acceptability: many MSM are eager to engage in an online conversation about HIV and STI prevention, rights and services; virtual spaces are perceived as safe to talk freely about sexual practices with no face-to-face bias; however, a significant proportion of MSM contacted online refused any discussion relating to sexual health and HIV.
  • Strong operational procedures and human resource capacity are required to maintain a high quality ICT tool that maintains privacy and confidentiality; consequently, organisational ICT capacity needs to be assessed and strengthened before initiating an online prevention project.
  • Monitoring and evaluation challenges: it is not easy to measure service use or user engagement online or to clearly show the link between use of ICT and uptake of services; monitoring of referral pathways between outreach CSOs and friendly providers needs to be aligned to track referral from virtual spaces to services.

One thing I do wonder: were any of these people involve volunteers?

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