Communication Skills for Rural Development [antikvár]

IntroductionThere are thousands of men and women all over the world who are working to improve the standard of living of rural families. These people are bringing about improvements in health, nutrition, fanning, forestry, fishing or in related subjects. They are given a variety of names, such as family planning workers, community development officers, health advisers, extension workers and so on. In this book the term 'Change Agent' is used to cover all these titles.We consider the subject matter of the book will be useful for all those working in rural development, be they in natural resources, health, community development, the T V system of extension or general extension.Most Change Agents have had a period at high school and have undertaken two or three years of technical training. However, to be effective in their work. Change Agents must combine this technical knowledge with communications skills. Generally, the training they receive is almost entirely concerned with providing technical knowledge. The result is that an Agent may be capable of solving some of the problems which rural people are experiencing, yet not be able to communicate or convince them of this.During the last few years in many countries, there has been a rapid increase in recruitment of Change Agents, resulting in organizations which now have considerable manpower, but are sometimes unable to achieve really significant development results. What is often lacking in these new recruits is a real commitment to helping the rural poor, and without this attitude any development plans will fail.This book is concerned with both the attitudes and communication skills required by Change Agents and we believe that a careful study of its contents will be of benefit to these people, particularly at the beginning of their careers.Each chapter of the book is presented in a way which will help the reader to study the material. The chapter starts with the learning objectives and definitions of technical terms that are used. This is followed by an introduction which provides reasons why the subject is important and briefly discusses its theoretical foundation. Then, after the subject matter itself, there are study questions and group exercises which are designed to help the reader think further about the subject.We are grateful to Andrew Bartlett who not only made many comments and suggestions, but who also undertook the editing of this book.Ian MacDonald David Hearle