Effective Communication is key for rolling out the 2030 Agenda

Training on "Communicating as One" by the United Nations System Staff College

JJ swam to school from Benin to Togo every day as a kid and Madeline recently went to see the Rolling Stones in Cuba to celebrate her friend Mimi's 90th birthday in style. Why do you remember some stories and not others?  This was one of the questions, based on real anecdotes, explored by course participants 20 communications officers from 15 countries around the globe together with their trainers and facilitators from the UN Development Coordination Office (DOCO), media coaches and former Reuters journalists from Cheary and Gallagher Ltd, as well as the staff of the UNSSC Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development.

The participants learned about approaches to communicate and advocate for the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals and the wider 2030 Agenda. They discussed ways to support governments, while engaging young people, the private sector, civil society and other actors in the discussions in such a way that they feel ownership for the agenda and get inspired to take action. Through a mix of lectures and lots of interactive exercises, the three day course also covered methods and tools available to coordinate UN Communication efforts, new approaches to communications in UN Development Assistance Frameworks (UNDAFs) as well as concrete techniques to get an efficient message across to different audiences.

The "Communicating as One" course is conceived to support UN communication officers as they roll out joint communication efforts. Ultimately it aims at improving the ability within the UN System to articulate and feature concrete results of its work in support of the 2030 Agenda.

Two more editions of the course are planned in 2016 in Panama in June and in Dakar in November.

If you are interested, register here.