Services
What I can help you with
I offer a range of reliable, flexible and personable solutions. These include:
Developing a communication strategy
What can I do for you?
I guide your organisation through the process of reviewing your approach and success with communications and/or multilingual strategies. I provide recommendations, and help with implementing them. Steps in this process can include:
- Defining goals and SMART objectives
- Mapping audiences
- Baseline study and benchmarking
- Consulting with staff and other stakeholders
- Assessment report of current strategies
- Identifying key messages, content, and channels
- Proposal & implementation
My experience
I have worked on consultancies with Tearfund and Save the Children to develop new policies and business review related to their language policy and translation units. In addition, I worked on the development of a new communications strategy for Trias to increase its visibility, brand recognition, and employee engagement.
Related resources
My publications on language and translation policy in international NGOs can be a useful starting point to learn about how other organisations deal with multilingual communication needs.
Academic article on language and translation policy development in Oxfam GB and Tearfund. Published in the journal Language Problems and Language Planning. Available Open Access here.
This report based on extensive research includes recommendations for NGOs and their donors on language and communication practices. More details on the resources page.
This report describes the discussions held at a round table on translation policies at NGOs, held at Aston University, Birmingham on 22 June 2015. The event brought together NGO practitioners from Oxfam, Amnesty International, Family for Every Child and the Refugee and Migrant Centre. Read it here.
Monitor & evaluate your strategy
What can I do for you?
I provide advice and support to your organisation in monitoring and evaluating (M&E) your internal and external communication efforts. I can help you answer questions such as: Are audiences engaging with your content? Are you using the right language, channel and format to reach specific audiences? And what could you do to improve engagement? Methods that I work with include:
- Staff and stakeholder consultations
- Focus groups
- Audience surveys and polls
- Web & social media monitoring
- Content & discourse analysis
Related resources
Language barriers and preferences are often a blind spot in programming Monitoring & Evaluation frameworks. Delving deeper into how communication takes place across languages can help in better understanding the successes and blind spots of programme communications. Here are some resources that help showcase the hidden language work in communications.
A Learning Brief that I led in my collaboration with GOAL on the role of language barriers, translation & cultural adaptation in its humanitarian COVID-19 awareness raising campaign. Read it here.
A recorded conference presentation where I presented the findings on a language survey I conducted with GOAL can be found here. Skip to 4:30min for the survey findings, or read this blog post for a brief summary.
Training & facilitation
What can I do for you?
I have a broad portfolio of teaching experiences and course development that I draw on to design and deliver training courses. I can guide you through or take the lead in content development:
- Defining learning outcomes
- Developing the course outline
- Developing detailed lessons plans and course material
- Designing feedback mechanisms for course improvement
- Advising on promotional materials and marketing
- Course delivery
My experience
I have developed learning materials and delivered workshops for various NGOs. Examples include:
- Workshop on internal communications and inclusive communications with Country Directors at Trias
- Workshop on decolonising language for WarChild UK’s Black Lives Matter Committee (2020)
- Training for Amnesty translators (2014)
In addition, I taught on a variety of university courses at universities in Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK, including face-to-face and online teaching. In addition, I have . You can read more about my experience on the About page.