The billion dollar question

This is a post written on the website A Developing Story, which I started a few months back.  Some duckrabbit readers might have a few ideas:

Can you help us with answer a couple of questions?

Since Benjamin and I set up A Developing Story six months ago, we’ve been amazed by the response, and in particular the incredible range of contributors who’ve taken time to write, comment and send us links. Contributors to whom we owe a big debt of gratitude for making the site such a success.

On our best days we’ve had nearly 1000 unique visitors, (though we average around about 250 per day); we’ve made it into the Guardian and La Republicca; we’ve been linked to and discussed on many of the most influential media and development blogs, and most importantly we’re starting to see a small community of people develop round the site.

All of which is fantastic, however, while we set up A Developing Story as a showcase for the best content out there, we also wanted to use it as a platform for a campaign to persuade Government, IGOs, NGOs and to use Creative Commons licenses in the communications work they do in developing countries. Material that we believe should be available to others working in the sector in a free online database.

Why? Because taxpayers like you and me fund vital communications work that saves lives, which is a good thing, but more often than not development organizations prevent others from re-using the work. It’s a bit like a charity using your money to invent a medicine that can save lives but then refusing to share the recipe. (There’s more on Creative Commons in this post I wrote last year including a great presentation on Creative Commons from one of its progenitors Larry Lessig).

We intend to start this campaign in earnest over the next couple of months, however, there are a couple of things we thought you might be able to help us with.

1. Can you help to quantify the annual global spend on international development communications in developing countries?

Having done a little thinking about this we reckon there are two possible approaches – one is to start from the top and work down – looking first at the global aid budgets, then the average communication spend as a percentage, and then the percentage of that spent in the developing world. Alternatively, it might be possible to try and piece together some figures from the bottom up, buy adding together figures from the UN, EU, and some of the major NGOs, etc, however, I think this might be pretty tricky, though looking at the way individual organisations spend their money might provide some useful touch points which could be used in the campaign.

We hope to turn all the data we get into an interesting infographic, and any work provided will of course be fully credited.

2. Who do you know who might be able to help us?

Who might be interested in supporting our campaign? Who should we send out letter to? Who might sign it beforehand? O.K. I know that’s more than one question, but we’d love to hear from anyone who might help.

3. Does anyone know a Flash developer who might do a small animation on a pro bono basis?

We’d love to make a little animation of the infographic to go with the campaign, however, we’re self-funded at the moment, and our pockets aren’t deep enough to afford a Flash developer. We’re not looking for anything enormously complex, just a minute or so of animation, we can use to explain and promote the campaign.

Thanks again for everyone who’s contributed to the site so far, without your input it wouldn’t be possible, as we both have day jobs and young families. We’d particularly like to thank Eliza Gregory, who’s contributed so much great material and whose offer to help with the campaign we’ve gratefully accepted. it’s great to have her on board, and if you haven’t read her posts, I urge you to check them out in the link above.

Finally, thanks in advance for any help on the campaign to introduce Creative Commons licenses into international development communications work.

Yours,

John and Benjamin