About 25 Malaysian development planners and project managers will undergo a 16-week blended training on Communication for Development (ComDev) planning during this coming June-August 2015.
Organized by the Sarawak Development Institute (SDI),
the training aims to enable the participants from various state agencies and sectoral agencies of the Sarawak State in Malaysia to formulate a 5-year strategic ComDev Plan for a particular development project they are engaged in.
The training, however, will not be one-time “sit-down” activity. Rather, it is designed as a composite of face-to-face and online mentoring and coaching to enable the participants to actually experience the various steps needed for planning. A five-day face-to-face workshop on actual strategic design based on data from the field will be handled by four senior faculty members
A 5-day face-to-face workshop on ComDev strategy design based on data from the field will be handled by four senior faculty members of the College of Development Communication, UP Los Banos (CDC-UPLB). The same faculty will provide on-line mentoring for each step in the Comdev planning process. The series of learning activities are expected to enable the participants to work on real data and information, not hypothetical ones, needed for their plans.
The Communication for Rural Development Sourcebook jointly produced by FAO and CDC-UPLB will be used as the main reference and guide for this training.
Last year, an overview of the ComDev planning process and some actual experiences were presented to the key state officials (read more) as part of earlier advocacy to mainstream ComDev in the implementation of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) development agenda. SCORE aims to build upon the country’s economic achievements and transform Sarawak into a high-income economy by the year 2030.