<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> The article tells the story of the evolution of communication for development within the United Nation’s (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), describing the good times in the past as well as the difficult times in the last decade as an example of how the discipline continues to be marginalised in development institutions. The author argues that new challenges and trends demand new thinking on the part of institutions and governments, as well as new practices and skills by communication practitioners, and stresses the need to avoid re-inventing the wheel. New approaches should be married up with the participatory principles and methodologies applied in the past that are still valid for meeting the new challenges. The article concludes with a discussion of the prerequisites for an enabling environment for mainstreaming communication for development.</p></abstract>

The article tells the story of the evolution of communication for development within the United Nation’s (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), describing the good times in the past as well as the difficult times in the last decade as an example of how the discipline continues to be marginalised in development institutions. The author argues that new challenges and trends demand new thinking on the part of institutions and governments, as well as new practices and skills by communication practitioners, and stresses the need to avoid re-inventing the wheel. New approaches should be married up with the participatory principles and methodologies applied in the past that are still valid for meeting the new challenges. The article concludes with a discussion of the prerequisites for an enabling environment for mainstreaming communication for development.

Communication for Development in Good and Difficult Times

Communication for Development consultant. Together with Colin Fraser she pioneered ComDev activities in FAO in 1969, and was Chief of FAO’s ComDev program from 1984 to 1998

Nordicom Review

The FAO Experience

The article tells the story of the evolution of communication for development within the United Nation’s (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),...

Communication for Development in Good and Difficult Times

Published Online: Jul 30, 2013

Page range: 105 - 119

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2013-0029

This content is open access.