With a small group of our C4D Network members currently engaged on a project to design a package for Community Education in Tanzania, network members in Dar es Salaam proved a rich mine of information and source for lively discussion at our recent meet-up there. As a key element of this package will be building synergies between organisations working in the country, this C4D meet-up was a great example of how sectoral collaborations can work best.

Members represented C4D from all angles : film production, publishing, consultancy, radio production, UN agency work and quantitative research (and from the Network’s own Secretariat and Global Members’ Executive Committee). To kick-off, 6 key behaviour-change priorities were proposed – including the promotion of financial capability, family planning and child-respectful discipline. Debate involved the extensive re-shuffling of paper-slip ‘priorities’, and concluded with many more than 6 ideas! We nonetheless reflected on the importance of keeping messaging concise for it to be effective, and on the particular difficulty, therefore, of prioritising. The recent outbreak of cholera in Tanzania was a prominent consideration in this exercise.

Beyond this paper-shuffling collaboration (participatory communication in action!), which sparked many ideas for our members’ Community Education project, we also reflected on the potential for reviving forgotten C4D interventions and methods: what happened to the song about “Dirty Paul, go wash your hands”, which many Tanzanians remember from their childhood? Is ‘mobile’ cinema really that new, in the light of methods used by missionaries  (for example) in the 20th century?

The Dar es Salaam C4D group look forward to meeting again early next year, and to working on building links with members in Arusha, Zanzibar, and elsewhere in the country.