Communications Plan for Civil Society: Mutual Accountability Project (CS:MAP)

The project's primary objective is to promote mutual accountability between civil society organizations (CSOs) and the government of Nepal (GON), with the ultimate goal of advancing the public interest. To achieve this objective, CS:MAP will employ a range of tactics, including ensuring clear introduction and understanding of the project among potential partners and stakeholders. This will be achieved through project launch events in Kathmandu and Nepalgunj, which will bring together key government officials, parliamentarians, CSOs, media organizations, and other stakeholders. The events will provide a platform for CS:MAP to present its objectives and planned activities, build relationships with target CSO and media beneficiaries, and secure government buy-in and cooperation. CS:MAP will also organize Bidders' Conferences in Kathmandu and Nepalgunj to solicit questions and feedback from civil society and media organizations, and to explain project processes and priorities. The project will maintain consistency of messaging across all communications and outreach products, ensuring that all materials speak to the same issues from the same positions and contribute consistently and coherently to CS:MAP's goal and objectives. The project will rely on trusted sources of information, taking care to ensure that credibility is maintained in the public arena of Nepal. This will involve close consultation with USAID and investigation of the affiliations of media outlets to ensure that they are seen as independent and not explicitly aligned with any one political or corporate group. CS:MAP will also show systematic sensitivity towards, and seek to ensure systematic inclusion of, women, youth, and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups in its communications. Throughout its communications, CS:MAP will employ positive and respectful language towards, and ensure the full and effective inclusion of, women, youth, and other disadvantaged and marginalized groups. The project will conduct a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Assessment to identify issues and approaches relevant to programming and writing about women's and marginalized groups' issues in Nepal. This assessment will inform word choices and approaches to ensure that CS:MAP's communications are inclusive and respectful of all target audiences. CS:MAP's coordinated approach will ensure that outreach repeats core messages through an array of distribution channels, while important messages, such as those about RFAs and their deadlines, are sent out simultaneously through multiple channels of communication. The project will maintain a consistent and coherent message across all communications and outreach products, ensuring that all materials contribute to CS:MAP's goal and objectives. The project's messages will be linked to its objectives, activities, and outputs, which will be closely linked to the overall project message as approved by USAID in the Branding and Marking Plan. Newspaper advertisements for RFAs, event announcements through NGO and media networks, notices of vacant project staff positions, messages and statements distributed by email or listservs, press releases, media interviews, radio spots, public service announcements, short videos, and event announcements will all describe the CS:MAP goal and activities in a consistent way, with details varying according to target audiences. CS:MAP's communications and outreach roles and responsibilities will be outlined in the following sections, including the procedure and time interval for reviewing and evaluating the results and effectiveness of the Communications Plan and revising and improving as appropriate.