We’re back in Iraq with Marley Tinnock, a communications and reporting specialist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Iraq.
Marley Tinnock produces stories for a diverse audience: past, present, and potential aid recipients, Iraqi citizens, local stakeholders, donors, partnering NGOs and governments, the international development community, the general public… it’s almost dizzying just thinking about it! So, how does Marley communicate what’s occurring in some of the most remote and misunderstood regions of the world to this nuanced global audience, all while staying true to the human experience on the ground? Marley takes us behind the scenes reporting on beekeepers in the field and offers some tips on how we can highlight the impact of our work sincerely and compellingly.
Elyse:
Welcome to episode five of Humans of UNDP: a podcast where we to get to know fellow colleagues and where we explore how we connect and communicate in the digital age. Today co-producer, Oscar Durand, and I are back in Iraq with Marley Tinnock, a communications and reporting specialist. When we last spoke with Marley, she was back home in Australia, during the height of the wildfires. Now that she’s returned to Erbil, she’s still needing to stay safe indoors, but for another reason, Covid-19. Luckily, she’s finding a way to make the best of the lockdown with her new roommate.
Marley:
Sorry for the background noise as well, guys. I adopted a puppy as a coping mechanism whilst I'm on lockdown. So I have to keep one of the doors open so that he can get out if he needs to answer nature's call. So they may be a little bit of traffic in the background occasionally, but with lockdown it is minimum. So sorry about that. I've become somewhat of a puppy dealer. I'm getting a lot of other UN and NGO colleagues that are stuck in lockdown here with me having a puppy delivery service….So taking on a puppy is good service deed that you can do while in lockdown and keep you company.
Elyse:
Marley admits she is not much of a chef, so cooking while on lockdown has been a bit of a challenge given she is already out of the Vegemite supply she brought back from Australia. Fortunately, she has been enjoying another local speciality, raw honey. It was produced by some regional beekeepers she met in the field, documenting a vocational training programme led by a local NGO that Marley featured in one of her most recent articles for UNDP, “The Sweetest Job”. Marley told us that “Beekeeping has existed in Iraq in one form or another for an estimated 8,000 years. Even ancient Sumerian tablets had recipes that used honey for medicinal purposes. Fortunately, this medicine is anything but a bitter pill.
Marley:
It's very like a bit more of a caramel flavor profile than I would say a floral profile. Definitely nothing overly distinct. So I think it's a very good and marketable honey. But we tried, like I said, some of the raw honey, and that's before it's been processed and that's when it's got a bit of a creaminess to it, which is quite nice to taste as well.
Elyse:
Beekeeping in Iraq is resurging following a stark decline throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, due to recurring conflict, disease, displacement, and the increase in chemicals used for agriculture there. The beneficiaries Marley documented are also contributing to the growth of beekeeping in the region.
Marley:
So in the lowlands, in the Ninawa plains where we were visiting, it's primarily grassland area, so the beekeepers tend to live in communities where people have their own gardens or family gardens, both for vegetables but also flower gardens.
Elyse:
And of course, bees love these gardens. In total, 200 households were selected to receive hives, along with safety clothes and tools, and training on apiculture, business management and post-harvest marketing.
Marley:
They’re small scale. All of them have increased production over the past two years and they split their hives every year and create subsequent hives. Some of them sell those new hives and they just continue to see those businesses grow. But they all love eating honey. They love consuming honey. And they gave us some of the raw honey as well, which I hadn't eaten before. And probably me, um, was again a little bit, you know, cautious thing. Am I supposed to eat untreated, honey? Is that bad for me? And they're all laughing at me going, oh, silly, you can eat it. It's fine. And it was delicious. And it was great. And they gave us fresh bread.
Elyse:
And it was through connecting with people, that Marley was able to really get a sense for how to tell this story.
Marley:
So it was really nice to sort of connect with people that, you know, clearly really enjoyed the jobs. And I think that really goes back to the title of the piece, which is the sweetest job. And obviously that's not just a good play on words, but it really showed in the conversations that I had with people. And I think that was because I was able and I think this is key to capture and ask the right questions and get strong responses that I was able to put together a piece that people could relate to. For example, with the wasps, you know, I remember this one woman speaking to me and saying, you know, the wasp is the worst enemy of the bee. So she was, you know, so passionate telling me about it. She had her special stick that she used to squash the wasps and I shoo them out of the beehives. And it's these little things. It's like, you know, you don't know these things and all the little bits and pieces of the puzzle that come together to really tell someone's story. It's not straightforward. And I think that's how you can capture the human element and actually present it online. And so I was lucky that I was able to get some beautiful photos and some beautiful quotes.
You know, no story is going to be as successful if you don't have impactful visuals. But it has to be equally complemented by great insights and those elements of the text that really enable you to connect with the people. So it has to be a bit of a combination of both. So you need to I think you need to be just really present on the day and you need to be able to react well and respond well and engage with the beneficiaries.
Elyse:
Marley has to get creative to really capture and communicate the human side of the story to UNDP’s diverse online audiences. This can be challenging, especially because her audience is both internal and external to UNDP.
Marley:
Part of this story is to show the richness of this industry in Iraq. Our content is published in Kurdish and Arabic and English so that we can appeal to the local audiences as well as the international audiences. So I certainly think that highlighting that agriculture is a job that is enjoyable by many in many ways is feasible given the context that we're in and the market for such a good and that there is skills and and training that is available to them as well. I think that that speaks to an audience to say, you know, what are my career options? And potentially sparking an idea in someone's head to say, maybe I've never thought about this before, but could I be a beekeeper? I think that's one audience. I think the other audiences are definitely our donor community. In many cases, we credit our donors in these articles and they're able to see the impact of their work. And that usually is a good incentive to say this works. And then also the sort of international civil society, I think, to really be able to see the human side of what's happening in Iraq. And so people sitting at home in the US, in Australia, in Europe, in Latin America, wherever around the world can maybe relate a little bit to Iraq. There's an element of empathy, sympathy, and also just a greater understanding of the people and their history, because you don't always need to hear all the bad things. And I think each story that we're able to highlight the adversity, the strength and the spirit of Iraqi people through these stories, every story hopefully builds a greater narrative around, you know, just what can be achieved in this country if you know, there is not only funding support, but also an improved rhetoric around around the regions. I think it touches on a few different audiences for a few different reasons. And I think that that's the beauty of a more emotive editorial piece, is that it's not only talking about results, but it's also connecting to the human at the center of the story.
Elyse:
One of the best ways she reaches her local audience, and creates buzz around her stories, is by tagging them in the articles she posts.
Marley:
Often takes less than 24 hours and someone will have tags, the interviewees, and they’ll shared it within their own social media with their friends and their family. Yeah, you can see that people are proud of their livelihoods and they want to share it and they want to tell their story just in the right way.
But in the crowded space that is the Internet for everyone's story you put up there are five hundred million others. And I think that process of publishing and then waiting and then trying to to repurpose content when you feel is necessary is often the more difficult part.
You know, as digital communication is by nature, it's constantly evolving, it's constantly being updated minute by minute, second by second. So creating an impactful story is always one thing. But then, you know, making the most of it, I think sometimes is the hard part.
Elyse:
When it comes to her work in communications, Marley stressed the most critical element of producing a good story often comes down to how well she connects with the people she is interviewing.
Marley:
And if you kind of go in this stock standard and you just say, how many is given beekeeping? How many hives do you have? How much honey do you sell? How much do you sell it for? You're not necessarily gonna get to know people and you're not going to necessarily able to piece together a relatable story. It was really surprising how well I've got to connect with the beneficiaries. They were, you know, thankfully very open families, very willing to talk and very excited by the work that they do. But I think sometimes you strike gold with these pieces, you know. I probably go on mission, four or five times a month. Sometimes I go on mission and I come back and I don't have the story and you can't force it. But then there are days when you are able to come home from mission and know that you've really got something really beautiful. And you can put that together into a story and you can articulate it in a way that is both impactful in terms of the results, but also tells that really strong human element.
Elyse:
When we communicate digitally, the importance of paying attention to that human element is essential.
Marley:
It’s very easy when working at a large scale such as UNDP to think big picture, which is great and we want to look towards things like the SDG’s. But sometimes we forget that there's people at the core of everything that we do and that in order for us to really be able to stay committed to resolving these sort of global issues, we need to remember that there's people there and that those people, like us, have feelings, experiences, hard times, good times. And to connect, as someone working for UNDP, for the donors, for people in Iraq, and also the civil society in countries around the world, it's important to make that connection and to remind them that there are people there that we need to really highlight.
Elyse:
And today, in the midst of Covid-19, publishing work that connects us to one another is especially relevant. You just need to find your storytelling sweet spot.
We will continue to explore the challenges of digital communications in these times, in the next episode of Humans of UNDP, where we will go back to visit Victor Ladele in Fiji.
This episode of Humans of UNDP is produced by Oscar Durand and myself. Our theme music is by Lemon Guo, additional music by Chris Zabriskie and Sherita. Sound design by myself. Special thanks to Marley Tinnock for sharing her time, story, and sounds with us. To listen and subscribe, go to wherever you find your podcasts or DigitalNow dot undp dot org.
I’m Elyse Blennerhassett. Stay with us.