Further Communication

By Susan Maxson, 2nd year MDP student

Xochimilco, Mexico City

 

In our ongoing assignment to improve communication between RITA members and between central office and the members – the difficulties which I enumerated in my last blog – we asked the question “What about using the mail?” “It doesn't work” was the answer by many people in the RITA office.  But one brave person said “I don't think it works, but I don't really know.”  We then emailed the same question to a former MDP professor who had lived in Mexico.  His answer.  “Yes, it works, but it it isn't used very much.”

So Alejandro, Ian and I decided to test the  Mexican mail.  We sent five numbered envelopes to each of four RITA members (twenty letters total) whom we could phone and warn that the test letters were coming.  We asked them to tell us the date that each envelope arrived.

What a surprise!  The furthest place, Chiapas, received all five envelopes in only four days after they were mailed.  In the end, all twenty envelopes arrived promptly.  The Mexican postal system not only worked, it worked well.

This totally revolutionized the conversation about communication at RITA central office.  It opened up possibilities.   Our practicum team put together a proposal of a monthly newsletter which could go to all members whether or not they had a phone or Internet.  The newsletter would not only have articles by RITA head office but would include  photos, stories and events submitted by members.  Through this we hope to encourage horizontal communication between members as well as vertical communication from head office outward.  It is also hoped that  conversations on topics of interest could continue from month to month or be revisited to encourage clarification, and understanding of ideas or exchanges of practises which work in one area and might be tried in another.

Working on sending the "test letters" and the August newsletter

These are big hopes to pin on one small monthly newsletter.  But when communication has been so difficult, and the only good communication is the General Assembly every three years, this is exciting stuff.

Now the newsletter is written and ready to go out, but addresses are proving to be the difficulty.  There is no data base with all of the member addresses in it.  There did not seem to be a reason to collect them in the past.  We spent the last few weeks of our practicum trying to find addresses.  We have not been particularly successful.  We have only 21 addresses of the 120 members. So we are back to the grapevine method of communication.  We are putting an insert into all of the newsletters that are being mailed out asking for all of the addresses of members that they might know so next month RITA can send out more newsletters!

Communication Project in Mexico

By Susan Maxson, 2nd year MDP student

The office of La Red Indígena de Turismo de México (RITA)

So how does an umbrella organization work when communication is very poor?  The answer is - with great difficulty.  RITA is a tourist umbrella organization here in Mexico with 120  members.  Rita endeavors to support these indigenous member organizations in starting and running tourism operations that reflect and value their indigenous identities.  

Our assignment as development practitioners for the MDP program  was to work out a communication strategy that would help RITA to respond to the needs of its members and build communication channels that would facilitate growth.  

This has turned out to be a very challenging assignment.  Our first surprise was that the phone contact list only had 60 member organizations on it. Where were the other 60 members?  It turned out that they did not have phones and were getting their information from other member organizations because even cell phone coverage is lacking in many of the areas where the indigenous communities are. We then planned on focusing on the 60, but have since found out that even though these groups have phones,  they are an unreliable and many of the contact numbers are actually the village phones. A message must be left, and the person RITA is trying to contact will phone back – maybe!  

What about alternate forms of communication? The postal system in Mexico is not used much as it is not considered reliable.  A few of the members have internet, but the understanding of technology is low, and emails often do not get answered.  Education of many of the members is low, and some are operating in a second language – Spanish. There is a huge need for technical information (such as how to set up an email account) to be rewritten in simple language. 

There are a few members who have totally joined the internet age and even have their own web pages, but these are the exception.   RITA, as an umbrella organization, wants to reach all of its members.  It wants them to receive needed information, and be able to give their input into the services that they would like RITA to offer.  Our big question is “How might this be done?”  

It is an interesting assignment, and Alejandro, Ian and I have spent a lot of time, first trying to understand all of the dimensions of the problem and then looking for a solution or solutions as will probably be the case.  We have not come up with an answer – how could we?  People more closely involved with the situation have been grappling with it for years.  But we have learned a lot about the importance of communication and the many problems involved in it.  

Susan Maxson