While local chapters often adopt local charities, CommsCorps could go further by sending in pros to take control of a crisis situation, or by “training up” local resources to become more effective after the intervention. Funding could combine sponsor, participant, and, potentially even support from the target organization itself. Participants get great case study material, and it becomes a branded, distinctive and international part of what IABC is to be known for as the comms world evolves.

Justathought,

Mike Klein

Great comments! Time to stop talking and start brainstorming. I’ve asked members of the MyRagan site for their thoughts, as well. The important thing is to start.

Tom

I very much like your thoughts here on using communication to “teach people to fish” rather than to have them continue to expect others to do their fishing for them.

There’s an interesting extension of that concept–to take major world issues, like world hunger, climate change, housing shortages, or even insufficient organizational performance–and reframe them as communication problems that can be addressed by moving information to people in a way that empowers them to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

As for measurement–it’s important, but it’s more useful in convincing others of the value of what we do than in informing us about how to operate. An over-reliance on measured and proven approaches can stifle creativity–and leave us fighting the previous war instead of specifically meeting the next challenge.

All the best,

Mike

I agree that by doing something we can help save lives.

To me, the difference is in giving a man a fish to feed him for a day and teaching a man to fish so that he may feed himself for life.

As communicators, we can use our abilities and outlets to inform and educated the un-enlightened who continue to think that solving our world-wide social problems is something the anonymous and ubiquitous “they” should take care of.

Wilma

The people who will be swinging hammers, carrying drywall and painting walls next month for the Habitat for Humanity project prior to the IABC International Conference in New Orleans will be doing something. Anyone who raises the issues of, for example, hunger, slavery and the homeless is saving lives.

Sometimes it means actually intervening to prevent someone from dying or being killed. Sometimes it means giving hope to someone who would otherwise have died of a broken heart.

Sometimes these efforts can be measured, as Wilma suggests. Sometimes they don’t need to be measured, because the deed is enough.

Only with research and validation of HOW our work has affected audiences can we begin to better describe and defend what we do.

Wilma