The most vulnerable are, for once, central to the world’s conversations

To all our friends, partners and colleagues,

On Our Radar was founded to ensure that those who are vulnerable have a genuine public voice and a say in the matters that affect their lives. 

We are in an unprecedented situation where the most vulnerable are, for once, central to the world’s conversations. Community action is surging with offers of help and local groups arranging support for those who are ill, lonely or at-risk. 

This is a time for physical distance but human connection. But alongside food deliveries and morale boosting activities, we must also keep communication channels open and information flowing to and from those who are most vulnerable. If we can flag urgent issues and understand the impact that Covid-19 is having on people’s lives, we can respond and build resilience. 

We have spent the past 8 years developing tools to enable communities to share insight, even when they face significant barriers to doing so.

• We have a scoping framework to swiftly identify communications challenges and co-design strategies to amplify community voices.
• We have communications technology to facilitate remote community conversations with remote, offline or isolated groups.
• We can use mobile training tools to establish remote community journalism networks, including rapidly deployed training packages for crises. 
• We have a co-production approach that we have used to create award-winning digital media and documentaries with vulnerable communities. 

With these resources, we have covered the Ebola outbreak with offline quarantined community reporter networks for UK media. We developed the nationally-acclaimed Dementia Diaries initiative, collecting thousands of audio diaries from those living with dementia. We now work with Comic Relief to gather community insight on malaria across Sierra Leone. 

These tools could be very valuable to organisations looking to increase engagement with communities during this time of restricted movement and heightened vulnerability. As a small team, our reach is only as good as our networks. Get in touch if you feel our skills or resources could be of use to your work or to those you partner with.

For those interested in exploring our approach, we have released an open toolkit for journalists and comms teams here.