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Coordinating with other actors is essential to providing a quality information service. Working with other actors throughout the program cycle is important to avoid duplication and to identify opportunities for joined efforts and efficiencies, funding, and more.
For example, to conduct joint interagency assessments, to collaborate on information service delivery to reach different segments of the population. Coordination is also particularly important to strengthen your service mapping and information production efforts and avoid duplication. For service mapping, it will be
necessary to identify and gather information from a range of service providers, and collaborating with other frontline responders can help you to obtain existing information about service providers that has already been collected.
When producing information, you will need to work with a range of intersectoral actors to quickly develop and validate information content, and collaboration with other frontline responders can help you obtain existing information or key messages which have already been verified or obtain content that is already prepared and can be shared with your audience immediately.
Tips for coordination:
- Engage with coordination mechanisms to efficiently coordinate with a range of interagency stakeholders. See Table 5 for a list of potential structures that may exist in your context.
- Start identifying and communicating with a broad range of stakeholders early. Both service mapping and information production rely on building strong relationships with other stakeholders – building these connections early and clearly articulating what you are doing is essential to the success of responsive
information services, as these can be the most time-consuming factors for implementation. - Once you have mapped fora to engage with, you these platforms to introduce RISE as a program model and your context-specific RISE strategy, as it is developed. These can also be spaces to gather feedback from other actors on community information needs and preferences and collaborate on service mapping efforts and to expand your mapping of information sources to verify information. Often, you can request the inclusion of agenda items to present and solicit engagement.
- Often, national coordination platforms will conduct a mapping exercise of who is doing what, where, when (‘4Ws’) to know which agencies are working on communication and community engagement and their focal points to inform analysis of opportunities and needs integrated into overall coordination. Use this as a resource and ensure your team’s RISE efforts are represented.
- Don’t underestimate the power of coordination with actors outside of government or humanitarian spaces, such as media. Local media play a key role in communications with communities and generally have well established positive trust relationships with their communities. (24) They also have broad reach, which may also stretch to remote areas you can’t reach. Establish relationships with local journalists, journalists’ networks, and media development agencies to share information on your program – your team may be able to be a valuable source of information for them, and they may a valuable source of information for you.
| RESOURCE - For more information, see ‘Collaborating with broadcasters beyond partnerships’ in the BBMA Lifeline Guidance on Working with Broadcasters in Humanitarian Crises (25) and Internews’ The Space Between Us: Understanding trust, communication and collaboration between media and humanitarian organizations in public health emergencies (26). |
Table 5. Common relevant coordination platforms
RISE doesn’t fit perfecting into any single coordination mechanism – as information is important to all sectors but is often not systematically prioritized or funded – so coordination can be unclear. This can be both an opportunity and a challenge when thinking about how to go about collaborating with coordination platforms in your context. The structure and functions of national platforms will vary according to context, based on needs and capacities, but all act as a complementary coordination service to existing and emerging humanitarian architecture. (27)
| Examples include: |
| Clusters are convening bodies of organizations related to specific sectors of humanitarian action. The cluster system is activated in non-refugee emergencies by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). While information services – or related communication and community engagement efforts - do not have a dedicated cluster, it is integrated into a number of different sectors and their corresponding clusters. Lifesaving information is often a particular priority for the Protection Cluster (led by UNHCR), Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (led by WFP, with focus on provision of telecommunications infrastructure, connectivity, access to devices, mobile phone charging etc.), and Health Cluster (led by WHO). |
| Inter-cluster working/coordination groups may be called different names depending on the context, but its main purpose is to create a space for cluster leads to share information and discuss crosscutting issues (usually led by OCHA) (28). In some contexts, this is where communication and community engagement is coordinated. |
| Working groups are coordination systems that can exist alongside or separate from the cluster system. Information services may exist as a dedicated (sub) working Group, under different names. Examples of relevant working groups might include Communicating with Communities (CwC), Communication and Community Engagement (CCE), or Accountability to Affected People (AAP). Priorities related to information services may be part of the mandate of other working groups, such as protection (including child Protection/GBV) or equivalent, or cash. |
| Government-led coordination platforms |
| Intergovernmental NGO (INGO) forums, which exist in certain contexts coordinating the response of INGOs. Often links with the UN-led coordination mechanism. |
| NGO or CBO forums, which may be a separate coordination body led by local or national NGOs or community-based organizations. |
| Communities of practice |
| Common services, for example a common feedback mechanism or hotline |
| Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Collective Service, which is a group specific to health-related messaging and community engagement, with focus on social and behavior change objectives. Jointly led in partnership by WHO, UNICEF and IFRC. |
| Task teams or sub-groups to a task team |
| Networks |
| Media and journalism networks and forums |