• Read the chapter 2.2 Stakeholder engagement of the Handbook on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluating for Development Results (UNDP)
• Reflection:
  • how would you ensure appropriate communication on the initiative, a project or programme, to all stakeholders?
  • Imagine now that there are several other projects and programmes targetting the same stakeholders. How will each stakeholder cope with the information it receives from each of those project and programmes? And how will each stakeholder experience the repeated questions for his or her opinion on matter X, Y, Z ?

The baseline conjecture is that at present a huge effort and expense is dedicated either (i) to communicating with stakeholders for engagement with limited capturing of content, or (ii) to the authoring and publishing of reports, books and documents that capture content in a manner that is only marginally supportive to engagement by the stakeholders of any development initiative.

• Vision statement: a question is not asked twice to the same stakeholder; concerns expressed by a stakeholder in one project context are visible also in other project contexts; concerns by all stakeholders are equally captured to be visible to the project team and beyond. The Stakeholder engagement steps from the UNDP handbook are extended as follows:
  • Step 1. Stakeholder analysis: add each stakeholder either to one of the Sector Maps (example: teacher) or to an Country Actor Map (or local actor map) (example:Association of Private Health Facilities in Tanzania), or enhance the actor's description with information pertinent to the new initiative.
  • Step 2. Orientation and traininig of stakeholders: guide the stakeholders through the Actor Maps, such that via the actor descriptions, they can become aware of the concerns of other stakeholders in each initiative; explain how to add comments to statements on concerns, etc.

The blueprint conjecture is that it takes only a little collective effort to substantially improve development communications: by paying more attention to marginal voices, and achieving a dialogue between their concerns and the development knowledge that is currently "locked up" in innumerable reports and documents. Already in the planning of an initiative, the actors mapped in the Actor Atlas facilitate early awareness of stakeholders, and the concerns they have expressed before.

Development initiatives adhering to the content management techniques proposed in this tutorial will see a shift of spending to the learning and empowerment of the small holders in development. A most desirable shift, as it can be understood from Merlie Mendoza's speech to the UN General Assembly's hearings with Non-governmental organizations, Civil society organizations and the Private sector (June 15, 2010): Equitable governance and people empowerment (at Scribd).