| Type | Non-governmental organization |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1986 |
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Focus | Communication for development |
| Website | www.panos.org.uk |
Panos London is a London based, non-governmental organisation working in the communication for development field. It is part of the Panos Institute.
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'Panos London' was established in 1986 by journalist Jon Tinker, after leaving IIED, and the programme he ran there entitled Earthscan[1]. The organisation's first major project was for Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) producing fourteen 10,000 word studies on the sustainability of Nordic aid programmes, written by journalists based in the recipient countries. Panos London has subsequently followed that method aiming to have reports written by people from the developing world. Jon Tinker described this as, "Providing authentic Southern voices on Southern issues"[2]
Since its inception Panos London has created a number of programmes relating to issues affecting developing countries. These include an environment programme, a media development programme, an AIDS/HIV programme and a oral testimony programme. It was one of the first non-governmental organisations to highlight HIV/AIDS as a development issue, producing a dossier in 1986 entitled AIDS and the Third World.
The publication of Listening for a Change in 1991 marked the start of Panos London's involvement with oral testimony. Panos London defined oral testimony as collecting personal histories from individuals who are directly affected by development issues. In a video produced by Panos London, in 2009, the organisation explained that interviews were undertaken by people who shared aspects of each other's backgrounds to record the most comprehensive history. The video explained that "oral testimony addresses a key aspect of poverty, the lack of voice."[3]
The most well known oral testimony projects that Panos London has undertaken have been IDP Voices, which was undertaken in conjunction with the Norwegian Refugee Council and Mountain Voices, which was undertaken with the support of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. IDP Voices gathered testimonies from internally displaced people in both Colombia and Georgia, after conflicts there. The Mountain Voices project collected interviews from 300 people living in highland areas around the world, including Pakistan, Mexico, Ethiopia, Peru, India and Nepal.
More recently Panos London has become involved with participatory video alongside Living Lens.[4] Together they facilitated local people in southern Madagascar to produce videos about aspects of their lives, which were affected by climate change or changing traditions[5]
During the 1990s independent offices were opened around the world including Zambia, Haiti, Nepal, Ethiopia and India. In 2000 the Panos West African office became the first to transition to become an autonomous Panos institute, with the rest of the offices making the same transition over the course of the next six years.[6] As such Panos London is now part of the worldwide Panos network of independent offices, the Panos Institute, working to ensure that information is used more effectively to foster debate, pluralism and democracy.
During this transition Panos London began to focus more heavily on communication for development; a term used to refer to all the different types of communication that need to take place in societies if sustainable democratic development is to occur. Within this Panos London continuted to promote the participation of poor and marginalised people in national and international development debates through media and communication projects. The focus on communication for development has led to strategic partnerships being established in 2005 with DFID and since 2009 with SIDA.
Panos London produces regular features by southern journalists, and creates a daily news bulletin about development issues[7]. One of the areas that it is involved with is media development. This has most often taken the form of journalism fellowships. In 2005 Panos London supported a series of fellows to report on the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. One of the journalists, John Kamau, wrote about his experiences for the BBC[8], whilst others wrote for the Panos London blog. Since then Panos London has often supported journalists at international summits including in 2007 when Panos London again took nine journalists to the G8, this time in Rostock, Germany, or at the 2009 UNFCCC in Copenhagen, when Panos London, alongside the Panos Network, IIED and Internews took 40 journalists to the global summit as part of the Climate Change Media Partnership[9].
In partnership with local organisations Panos London trains local people to draw out the personal experiences in their communities so they can share them with the world. In this process it is ensured that decision makers hear the voices of the poor by bringing together policymakers, people affected by their decisions and the local and national media in a full debate. Thanks to this facilitation the public in both richer and poorer countries can hear the truth about poverty, climate change and their impacts on our world through effective media.