Communicating Environmental Protection

Communication strategies used by the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project Phase II in Indonesia helped shift villagers’ destructive fishing behavior and poor waste disposal toward a community-based effort to manage resources, and still economically benefit from environmental protection. Communication approaches engaged national and local stakeholders with conflicting interests and needs, and used social mobilization and advocacy to get various groups—women, youth, academe, and civil society—to monitor and sustain project gains.

Experience of Mobile Phone Survey in Sri Lanka on Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Using results-based lending, Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s project on skills sector enhancement in Sri Lanka sought to improve the employability of youth who graduated from ADB-supported technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programs to 52% in 2016. Interactive voice response, a digital technology using automated phone calls, was used to verify whether TVET graduates are currently employed.

New Communication Technologies: Linking Stakeholders in Difficult Communication Environments

When emergencies or disasters strike, communication can be as vital as food and shelter but it is also among the infrastructure systems that are easily damaged or rendered unavailable. This report discusses the utility of Firechat, an off-grid communication technology, to Asian Development Bank-financed projects that are mostly located in difficult communication environments and are vulnerable to emergencies and disasters.

Enabling Communication in Times of Disaster

FireChat is a free mobile phone application that functions as a communication tool for posting messages without the need for cellular service or connection to an internet network. It has been used in situations where there was congestion in cellular and internet signals due to the volume of users; in difficult communication environments where communication infrastructure is blocked or damaged; and during disaster and emergencies.

Linking Stakeholders in Difficult Communication Environments

Ways to strengthen the resilience of communication networks used by stakeholders in Asian Development Bank-assisted projects were discussed in this learning event. Marina Azcarate of FireChat shared how mobile gadgets can create peer-to-peer networks for communication in emergencies. A project in Tacloban City in the Philippines was used as a case study on how communication technologies can be integrated to strengthen the resilience of stakeholders.