COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING
I offer communications workshops, webinars, and coaching to UN agencies and other organizations.
I tailor the workshops to your needs, your schedule, and your budget.
I’ve given in-person workshops in such places as Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Guyana, Jordan, and beyond. I’ve done webinars and coaching for UN staff worldwide.
CLEAR WRITING
Banish jargon from your writing, and communicate in ways that your readers will quickly grasp! This interactive workshop covers how to be purposeful, clear, concise, and organized in all your writing. We’ll also talk about why we use jargon, why expertise can be a problem, and how to use metaphor. Participants will leave with a set of practices they can start to use right away.
STORYTELLING
For NGOs, the primary purpose of stories should be to connect, not to inform. But NGOs often produce stories that read like reports with a human face pasted on as an afterthought. In this workshop, we’ll cover how to keep your audience’s attention, write about ‘boring’ topics, and connect personal stories to social problems. We’ll also discuss how to interview people to get good stories.
PROPOSAL-WRITING
Competition for grants is tough. In this workshop, I draw on my long experience working with foundations and nonprofits to show you how to research funding opportunities, devise great projects, write winning proposals, measure impact, and nurture relationships with funders. This workshop can be tailored to UN agencies, and, at your request, will cover problem trees and theories of change.
SPEECH-WRITING
Most speeches are forgettable. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to write more memorable speeches by using theme, structure, rhetoric, and stories. Along the way, you’ll also learn tips on how to simplify your statistics, use plain speech, and start and finish strong. This session also covers what information you’ll need to get in order to write speeches for other people.
Op-eds
When crafting an opinion piece, many writers put in too much information and not enough opinion. We’ll look at examples of great and not-so-great op-eds, and explore what’s special about your perspective, how to connect your opinion to current events, and why the reader should care. Participants will outline their own op-eds and receive follow-up support to finish them.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
You’re an expert in your issue area, but sometimes you don’t know how to talk about it in public. In this workshop, we’ll do exercises to help you improve your speeches and media interviews. We’ll practice using voice, facial expressions, and body language, and we’ll cover how to understand audiences and journalists. This workshop can be paired with the one on speech-writing.
COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
Don’t make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. In this workshop, we’ll walk through a communications strategy for your program—starting with your goals, and only then proceeding to your target audiences, how to reach them, and what messages to send. You’ll leave the workshop with a practical outline of a communications strategy and will get follow-up support to carry it out.
Arts & Culture Strategies
How many songs do you know the lyrics to? Probably a lot more than the number of policy briefs you can recite. Music makes an impression. It’s not just music but all art forms—dance, painting, theater, and more—that move us. In this workshop, we’ll look at how to use the arts & culture to create change, and we’ll devise a project you can create. You’ll get follow-up support in the months after the workshop.
OTHER TRAINING OPTIONS
Do you have other training needs? I also offer sessions on such topics as punchy PowerPoints and effective use of social media. Or if you have a communications need that’s not addressed here, drop me a line and let’s talk.