By Ana Letícia Silva and Paulo Motoryn
Report series: The challenges of communicating social justice community philanthropy
This is a series of reports with 4 texts derived from a press conference held with communicators from organizations in the Philanthropy Network for Social Justice, identifying the main challenges experienced in communicating community philanthropy and social justice based on the practice of d@ cominicador@es.
We received the reflections and put them into dialogue, composing these texts organized by themes identified throughout reading and listening (systematization), based on the following questions:
● How important is the work that Network organizations carry out for society? What is communica@es' view of this work and how does it reveal the meaning of Community Philanthropy and Social Justice for society?
● What challenges have communicators faced in communicating the meaning of the work of Network organizations for society?
Interviewees were: Larissa Amorim (Casa Fluminense); Silvia Dias and Fernanda Lopes (Baobá Fund); Mônica Nóbrega (Brazil Human Rights Fund); Renata Saavedra (Fundo Elas); Harley Nascimento (Positive Fund); Attilio Zonin (Casa Fund); Ivanderson Pinheiro (Instituto Baixada); Andreia Coutinho (Instituto Clima e Sociedade); Stefani Ceolla (ICOM); Méle Dornelas (ISPN); Simone Amorim (Tabôa); Andrea Blum (Redes da Maré)
Report 4:
Communication articulated in a network and its power to influence public policies and the field of philanthropy
Communicators/as of Philanthropy and Social Justice Network talk about investing in a distributed and participatory logic to enhance communication strategies and transform public policies
The best-known notion of network communication translates into the emergence of the internet, which substantially changed the conditions and strategies for circulating information. Networked communication, however, has a long history and profound meaning for social justice philanthropy.
The Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, one of the people largely responsible for popularizing the term in society, with the publication of his trilogy The Information Age: Economy, society and culture, deconstructs the current common sense view of expression. According to Castells, the phenomenon appears long before the World Wide Web (www), the world wide web. For him, the internet only enhanced phenomena that already existed in society. The Spaniard therefore argues that the internet is not synonymous with network communication, but one of its possibilities.
Castells' vision, about the internet as a tool and network communication as its essence, materialized in the interviews carried out with the members of the communication teams of the organizations that make up the RJFS (Philanthropy and Social Justice Network). The interviewees made clear the essence of the communication they practice: attentive to the challenges and possibilities of new information technologies, but which prioritizes human communication, based on partnerships and dialogues, therefore, in a network.
The team members of the Casa Fluminense, for example, talked about the challenges of active and participatory communication with social leaders and organizations that work in the field of public management, their area of activity.
“We propose, together with social leaders, to create processes training and mobilization in the territories, territorial and thematic articulation of agendas. This makes a difference in this scenario: this perspective of monitoring, of social control by civil society. It is from this active and participatory action that we produce reflections on better public policies, putting pressure on decision makers, identifying at which points the policy formulation processes need to advance.”, they stated.
O Positive Background, in turn, brought up the importance of articulating with movements and organizations to influence public policies. According to team members, it is through network communication that it is possible to debate the expansion of social rights guaranteed to the population with which they work.
“The work of Fundo Positivo aims to contribute so that this social movement, expanding to the women's movement, to the LGBTI movement, can continue its work of building these policies of access to rights, access to health. So that these institutions continue to exist in such a diverse country and continue to offer services to the most vulnerable”, they said. In this sense, it has a great relationship with the issue of social justice philanthropy, as it is a fund that allows these voices to echo through the movements to which they are linked and to offer a large number of services to these populations, especially access to justice and rights as a whole”, concluded.
At the Elas Background, the complexity of making communication that is not based on the institutional, but on programs, becomes more subtle when acting in an integrated way with actors in the field.
“In Elas communication, we also have the challenge of having carried out fragmented communication over the years, focused on different programs instead of communicating the institutional whole. We therefore have a fundamental role in supporting the sustainability and development of women's movements in Brazil, supporting their main achievements for 20 years, mobilizing more partners and financiers”, they stated.
Already the ISPN highlighted the importance of having direct contact with the population benefiting from their work to strengthen the notion of rights that are not so widespread, such as “access to territory”.
“ISPN also works to value the benefiting populations, made up of people who have been historically marginalized or have been denied rights: family farmers and traditional peoples and communities. The aim is to leave them with the leading role in the actions, which also take the form of political actions in defense of their rights, especially with regard to the right to territory”, stated the team of communicators.
The team at Brazil Fund translated into the concept of creating bridges the proposal to, more than communicate, act in a network, making and strengthening connections as a way of amplifying messages.
“We create bridges between grassroots groups with common agendas or interests, and between them and parts of society interested in investing in the sustainable development of communities across the country”, said the members of the team that works with the communication of the Brazil Fund.
At the Baixada Institute, the communicators highlighted the importance of “walking the same path” when you want to reach a common objective, in this case, the quality of life of the resident of Baixada Maranhense.
“We must all follow the same path, always taking into account the objectives of the collectives, which ends up adding improvements to the individual quality of life of the downloader”, they remembered.
In the interview with the ICOM, the role of the organization in not only working for self-promotion, but also strengthening an ecosystem of organizations and collectives, became evident.
“ICOM’s work is important because it strengthens organized civil society, supports social justice causes that promote equity, democratizes access to resources and creates spaces for the elaboration and sharing of knowledge”, they stated.
At the iCS, according to the testimony of communicators, dialogue with multiple actors is the most effective path and aims to transform public climate policies.
“We seek to build evidence that promotes spaces for dialogue between multiple actors, aiming to further boost the climate agenda in Brazil. This then involves political and economic commitments, as well as more effective governance and control mechanisms for policies that affect the climate.”, they said.
For the Baobab Fund, recognition of the actors involved in the organization's communication process is fundamental. The fund's communications team highlighted that it is necessary to know that “those who give and those who receive are subjects of their stories”.
“Although it may seem that there is a hierarchical relationship differentiating who gives and who receives, both are subjects of their stories and philanthropy that considers the dynamics established in territories, in communities as a key piece for transformation gives this dimension of complementarity of the assigned roles to each political actor involved”, they stated.
