Environmental policy and administrative management

Of all the media, the role of photo -news seems to be prominent and they are important visual materials to the public. The combination of photos and news can make the information captivating and precise, enhance its persuasion capability and help people to raise their awareness. Being simple, approachable and of unsophisticated technical and technological requirements, photo-news is one of the various forms of the mass media. With an advantage of being easily exploited on site and quickly and directly accessible to a widespread population, photo-news on the one hand helps to promote the people s awareness through which to create impacts on people s activities, on the other hand contributes to meeting their artistic needs. The spread of knowledge through artistic activities is also one of the most convenient and widespread methods. Photo voice is a techniques used to promote the roles of the community in the activities for the conservation and development of culture and natural resources through specific photos taken by the people and shown to the public. With an aim to improve the community s effective participation in projects to conserve their traditional knowledge while they have difficulties in using their indigenous language for communication, Photo voice can help the community to participate in the process of conserving and introducing their traditions with the photos that they take from their life and their living environment. Greater attention should be paid to the establishment of a communication system to provide information to GEF/SGP Office and the use of the central and local mass media as a communication channel between different projects, between GEF/SGP Office with the projects and between projects and the public in general. The project aims to enhance capacity of the GEF/SGP local grantees and partners in communications work. It also gives priority to strengthening the working partnerships between GEF/SGP projects and local media. The project tests Photo voice techniques in promoting the role and participation of the community, especially indigenous community, in conservation work. Key project activities include the followings. 1. Organize training workshops for GEF/SGP local grantees and partners on communications. 2. Developing demonstration models to apply Photo voice techniques and strengthening working partnerships between grantees and local media. 3. Testing an innovative approach to assist indigenous community in remote areas to access to GEF/SGP grants.

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