1. Select your Target Audience
2. Select your Topic and Key Messages
3. Identify funding partners
4. Ensure community-level distribution
5. Mechanics of production
1. Select your Target Audience
The first step is to identify the audience you need to reach: focus on those who cannot read well or have a low level of literacy. Women in most countries have lower literacy levels than men. The audience for a Speaking Book can be young children who haven’t yet learned to read properly, inner-city or rural teens who are not reading at their grade level, or literacy-challenged adults. Teens and adults with minimal reading skills often have not achieved health literacy.
The actual method of distribution and dissemination deserves detailed preparation up front. Will the book be given directly to the end user, or will it be in the hands of a Home Based Care worker, a pediatrician, a nurse or a social work for example? The messages will thus be accurately targeted (for example to the end users such as the head of household or the patient, or to intermediary communicators such as to the community health worker or volunteer).
2. Select your Topic and Key Messages
The subject of your Speaking Book must be of sufficient magnitude to require a large-scale community intervention. For example, 5000 copies of a Speaking Book are likely to impact from 30,000 to 100,000 people: they will see a copy of the book and hear all the messages. Topics are usually related to public health issues, and extend to development issues: any subject that makes life sustainable.
Examples:
Sleep under a bed-net all year round (not just during rainy season) Take your TB medication every day for the full 6 months (not just until you feel better).
Technical expertise in your specific program area will be essential to ensure that the messages are accurate and do indeed promote the vital behaviors that are desired. These technically accurate messages will then be simplified to low literacy level to ensure comprehension.
Length: The standard Speaking Book has 16 pages with a total of approximately 750 words in English. The total recording time amounts to 300 seconds (5 minutes). Other languages usually require more words and longer recordings to express the same ideas, so the English version should be as succinct as possible.
Speaking Books with extended recording times of 10 to 15 minutes are also available at a slightly higher cost.
You will want to ensure that your Speaking Book is culturally acceptable and relevant. Involving the local community, the target audience, and NGOs who serve them guarantees that messages will be appropriately expressed and therefore readily understood.
Finally you will be able to include useful resources and contacts on the back cover: Prepare a list of local agencies, with addresses and phone numbers to be printed clearly on the back cover. The Speaking Book will thus serve as a referral mechanism, creating demand for existing services available and accessible in the local community.
3. Identify funding partners
Anyone can fund the creation of a Speaking Book. Typically funding is from the national government, or from multilateral donors such as the UN, the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, for a non-profit or local NGO implementing a community public health intervention.
| | Private donors often contribute as well: these may be foundations as well as major corporations under their corporate social responsibility portfolio.
The other way is for example a pharmaceutical company funding books to reach a specific audience in support of their marketing efforts (e.g. why you should vaccinate your baby).
We have found in some cases that a number of partners come together to fund larger print runs. The national government may partner with a local NGO (who will also ensure distribution) and with corporate donors.
4. Ensure community-level distribution
An essential component for the success of any Speaking Book is the ability to distribute the books directly into the hands of the intended users. Thus it is critical to partner from the start with local community groups, non-governmental organizations, churches and religious groups, who are already integrated into the target community and know them well.
 The Books are often distributed by community workers, often volunteers, to the community members who are most at risk for the health care issue covered by the Book (TB, Mental Illness, HIV/AIDS, Malaria).
Local ownership and buy-in can be an essential way to enhance the success of your Speaking Book. The appropriate Ministry or the National Agency or Program overseeing a particular disease or development area participates among the originators of the Speaking Book.
5. Mechanics of production
The Story line can be created by you and your experts, and we will advise you on balance of text to image and linguistic level. It must be culturally appropriate for the intended audience. The messages must be scientifically accurate. In many cases we have been commissioned to handle all aspects of the Speaking Book origination including researching and writing the text.
The Design Brief will be developed and given to a graphic designer who will sketch out the initial Draft in 2-3 weeks. You will review and make any changes necessary within a week, the corrected Draft will go to an illustrator who will flesh out and fill in all of the pictures for the sixteen pages, and the cover pages.
In parallel the text will be finalized and if necessary translated into the local language of your target audience. We will have jointly identified an appropriate voice, sometimes a local celebrity. The recording of the sound track must take place as early as possible as the production of the sound boxes is the most time-consuming element.
You will sign off on the final PDF file of the illustrations and the WAV file of the recording: from that point it will take 60 days to produce your order of Speaking Books and up to another 30 days to ship them to the port of entry of the country.
The same book can be re-done in one or more different languages within the same country, stripping out the text and redoing the recording. This new book will be produced in the same time frame and at similar cost as a new book, minus the cost of design and illustration. |
