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The struggle to effectively communicate your work is something that NGOs of all sizes suffer from. It is crucial for both raising funds and awareness, as well as instilling donor confidence in an organisation’s work. Yet, there is not much training available on it, especially for smaller, frontline NGOs. ARISE’s mission is to build up frontline networks to effectively do their job; so I was delighted when the Albanian country group invited me to provide some training on this exact topic.
My training was unfortunately brief, and could only provide guidance for the process of creating better communications and PR, rather than providing an in-depth solution. It is my hope, however, that it will have provided each attendee with a better sense of how they might – for not much cost – produce better PR and communications materials. Each of the organisations do fantastic work and hopefully the training will give them some better tools to be able to inform donors and others of what they do.
Each of these smaller organisations, by themselves, could not have afforded such a training. This is where RENATE as a network can offer such value by convening the training for all the country members, thus lowering the cost for each. It is one area where being in a network can add immense value to frontline organisations. I would encourage RENATE and other country groups within international networks to invest in more of these solid trainings for its frontline members. Hopefully, they will result in impactful change far outside what each organisation can afford alone.
Ana Stakaj, co-ordinator of the RENATE members in Albania, was delighted with the attendance of 25 members, which included a member from Kosovo, (CARITAS Kosovo) who travelled especially for the meeting. The evaluations indicated the training was excellent and most professional. People left very satisfied and glad of the opportunity now to take time to absorb all that had been presented and discussed.
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