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Communication Policy
Communication policy
Document No: 03
Release date: March 8, 2021
Responsibility: Blind Women’s Association Nepal Effective date: March 8, 2021
Amendment date April 2022
1. Policy Statement
Blind Women Association, Nepal (BWAN) is a non-profit, non-political, and a social national level organization established to protect and promote the rights and interests of blind and visually impaired women across the country. It has been expanding its network in the province as well as districts as its branches and enhancing the capacity of paralegals to advance the rights of disability and gender. Therefore, BWAN needs to develop effective communication strategies to increase the participation of women with disabilities who can communicate the issues to the concerned bodies. Simultaneously, this policy would be a milestone to build institutional capacity that makes the organization a transparent, accountable, and responsible organization.
2. Definition
I. Internal Communication:
II. Sharing of information about the organization so employees can perform their jobs well.
III. External Communication: Any communication between an organization and its stakeholders outside the company or organization such as customers, suppliers, intermediaries, partners, or society in general.
IV. Information and Communication Technology: A diverse set of technological tools and resources used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information and communicate with each other.
V. Media Relations: Process that involves working with the media and with journalists to inform the common man about the policies, mission, vision, and practice of an organization in a credible manner
VI. Social Media: A computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through virtual networks and communities
VII. Rights to information: One who can get the information provided publicly to the citizens without any barriers.
3. Rationale of policy
BWAN believes in transparent, clean, and accountable administration which is possible through the promotion of rights to information. Without an effective communication policy, the target group of this association especially women with disabilities could not able to get gender justice within their communities. Thus BWAN establishes a set of principles to ensure effective communication within and outside the organization as well as its networks. The purpose of this policy is to help preserve and enhance the organization’s reputation, both internally and externally, and to help ensure that relevant information reaches the targeted audience, staff, and partners in the right format and at the right time. Therefore, this policy would be helpful to understand the value of effective communication among staff, executive board, members, and volunteers for delivering appropriate services and enhancing rights to information of all targeted groups. Alongside, this policy would pursue the executive board, members, staff, and volunteers to respect each other for achieving targeted organizational objectives.
4. Goal and Objectives
I. Goal
To ensure effective communication by safeguarding the rights of concerned stakeholders by advancing a trustworthy, transparent, clean responsive environment within the organization.
II. Objectives:
The following are the objectives of the BWAN Communication Policy:
• To make a responsible and accountable administrative and physical environment by modifying and adopting necessary technologies;
• To preserve or guard against the unlawful disclosure of official information;
• To maintain a high level of public and partners' trust and reliance on our organization.
5. Policies
Following are the policies to be adapted by BWAN for effective communication in the organization:
a. Communication with stakeholders, media and partners shall be aligned with the organization's official statements and strategy and must only be done by duly authorized organization spokespersons or authorized organization communication officers. Any employee who does not follow this rule may be held personally liable for his/her actions.
b. Each employee shall be committed to preserving and enhancing BWAN’s reputation. Any illegal or offensive behavior or statement, including via social media accounts, which could cause damage to the organization should be avoided.
c. BWAN shall be committed to providing the public with clear, accurate, and reliable information at all times. We seek to establish close relationships with our both internal and external staff and related organization partners and so on, through regular communication, integrity and transparency.
d. BWAN shall recognize the rich linguistic diversity within the Group. However, Nepali and English have been identified as the official language of the organization, and the learning and use of these languages should be promoted.
e. All BWAN documentation, correspondence, and organization-related information, unless and until publicly available shall be treated as confidential.
f. BWAN believes in clear, accurate, and reliable top-down and bottom-up communication through all levels of the organization. Efficient two-way channels of communication shall be ensured that employees understand, are aligned with, and help the organization achieve its objectives.
6. Strategies
Following are the strategies to be adapted by BWAN for effective communication in the organization:
a. Communication shall be linked to the strategic plan, including BWAN's mission, vision, and values; its strategic goals and objectives
b. To make the rules, regulations, and laws in favor of persons with disabilities and to make the communication with various stakeholders official, effective, clear, and simple in the public advocacy activities for the effective implementation of the existing policies, rules, and laws.
c. Communication order and mechanism shall be developed to ensure the objectives of these policies are achieved
d. The principle of accessibility shall be adopted to make communication effective.
e. Efforts shall be maintained to establish a communication mechanism suitable and sustainable in the organization
f. Application of this policy shall be monitored and progress and evaluation shall be checked on a timely basis.
g. The external communication strategies of the organization include public advocacy, awareness-raising, capacity building and cooperation, coordination and partnership, as well as transparency, accountability, access, and relations with the media
h. Rights to information shall be ensured by using different social media.
7. Financial management
The necessary resources and means will be managed to implement the communication policy. For this, the BWAN should mobilize resources from the government sector and national and international non-government organizations, and the private sectors. The internal fund will be generated by collecting support from members, well-wishers, and individuals.
8. Legal reform
BWAN gives due attention to the timely reform of this policy as per the necessity. This will be reformed and modified as per the need of the boards-decision even after this comes into effect.
9. Reporting
The front desk staff shall be accountable to the other staff for the dissemination of all information. Similarly, the general secretary and the secretary of the executive board will be responsible for reporting all information to the full board. The staff of the particular project will be assigned the reporting of all activities. If there is miscommunication among any staff or board members, that will be solved through meetings and discussions.
Code of conduct
I assign here to follow this communication policy as being the staff/board member of this association. I do committed to implementing this policy maintaining courtesy and reciprocal relations within and outside the organization.
Name Signature Date