The 4th and 5th June the first communication meeting in SAAM took place. Thanks to video calling tools, 21 people representing SAAM partnership met to explore together the communication and dissemination plans of the project, along with the SAAM’s Comms team.
Communication is a key aspect on SAAM
SAAM is meant to have an impact on people from 25 countries. This feature implies the fact that SAAM is going to reach several target groups with various backgrounds along several local contexts, besides its ambitious international sphere. Moreover, such a complex initiative is aimed at having the smoother although well-defined internal communication among the counterparts and stakeholders involved. In these days of uncertainty, SAAM faces the added challenge of handling the remoteness of their partnership in such a critical moment of History as the outbreak of COVID-19 is.
In a project of this size, coordination is crucial, and frequent communication meetings are an important tool to make sure that both the communication management team and the partners are always on the same page, that every participant understands their role and that the dissemination goals are being met by every partner and by the project as a whole.
In this regards, the first two communication meetings (one in French and one in English) were particularly important, as they brought together for the first time all the communication assignees on SAAM to dig deeper into the dissemination plan and the communication tools provided by the project.
One of the main challenges for SAAM’s communication strategy is to have a fluent internal communication and a common understanding despite the remoteness of the partnership and the travel restrictions
Communication in SAAM is absolutely challenging, since it has to take into account the specificity of the communication approach in each country where it is being implemented, but at the same time it has to follow common guidelines agreed at the beginning of the project. In this regard, common paths have been set in terms of dissemination, but at the same time each partner has room for adapting them to their local contexts and their specific target groups.
For reaching SAAM’s objectives, the communication meetings focused on exploring the dissemination plan, which is the framework for the next three years to obtain the expected impact for the project. Besides, the first dissemination actions were explained, so the partners would provide the needed material to feed SAAM’s sites (descriptions for the website, videos and photo material), and for every partner to set their own dissemination goals and media databases, and in order to explain how the reporting will be done throughout the lifespan of the project.
This is one of the specific meetings that have been conceive to complement the online Kick Off Meeting, in order to clarify the specific guidelines of the project regarding Communication, Administration and Quality.
