What the internet famous “grumpy cat” has to do with communication and visibility, marked the humorous kickoff question of the new Communication and Visibility Task Force of the institutions supported by the EU Microfinance Budget Support Programme in Jordan. Communicating about progress and results in the different work fields of financial inclusion is a joint responsibility and interest of the different players of the programme – they raise awareness, buy in major stakeholders, and move forward progress of a project. To get on board and coordinate all the players involved in microfinance and financial inclusion in Jordan, this task force met for the first time on Oct 5th, 2016 at the EU Delegation.So far, each involved institution invested care and resources into their respective communication and visibility instruments. By sharing these among the institutions and identifying their common denominators, participants were able to identify synergies and ways to increase outreach of their messages. The purpose of the task force is to help the stakeholders and the EU Budget Support Programme to refer to each other more easily: Be it in press releases, websites or other communication channels. This increases visibility for all parties following the principle of “do good and talk about it”, and not at last creates a feeling of a common objective and vision.

The participants from CBJ, Tanmeyah, DEF, the EU and the Al-Hussein Fund for Excellence agreed to coordinate their communication and visibility efforts and supply to each other their respective content in order to have concerted communication with the strongest synergy effects. The participants want to develop a plan on how to align the format, target groups and topics of future communications measures. The joint discussion created a positive atmosphere, a strong momentum for the programme’s work and delivered valuable results for the communication work.

by Thomas Oelker