Literacy Report Example

Communication challenges the world vision in Australia

In any setting, communication is a very powerful tool that any organization needs to get control of in order to effectively succeed in its various pursuits. There are several levels communication that an organization of any kind needs to understand. For instance, there is communication between personnel in a working criterion that enables them to share ideas that would in turn build the organization positively. In addition, there is communication between the departments within the organization and this is even more vital since it ensures that everyone is going towards the corporate goals of the business. There is also need for communication between the various management levels of the organization and even between the employees and the management ensuring the flow of information between the two. Finally, there is communication between the organization and the community which includes the clients and customers for the organization. This paper seeks to explain the various communication barriers that exist between World Vision in Australia and the community.
A communication barrier is anything that causes a hindrance to effective communication of information from the sender to the receiver. In this case, the World Vision is the sender while the community is the receiver for the information. In order to understand the various barriers and their deleterious effect on the purposes of communication, an understanding perhaps of the reasons why organizations must communicate might give a hint. Organizations seek to give the community an insight into their daily activities such as the products or services. For instance, the World Vision in Australia seeks to give the community the various health benefits through the public talks that they hold within the community in a bid to empower them to care properly for their children.

World Vision in Australia seeks to assist to maintain the well being of children in the community in support with other not-for-profit organizations. The unified effort is indeed a step towards achieving their goal. However, the World Vision faces lots of challenges especially when it comes to the communication aspect with the target communities. The ensuring of the well being of children is the main concern of the World Vision and since they do not communicate with the children, they communicate directly with their parents in a bid to give them the direction of ensuring proper care of the children. However, the mothers and fathers of these children are typically illiterate and so the efforts of the World Vision are impaired greatly taking them back to square one. In the end, the World Vision has to look for ways to counter the illiteracy problem rather than the well being of the child.
Communication with the community is a very important aspect for the World Vision in Australia as they employ it to pass the vital information to the parents on how best to care for the children. However, the parent’s literacy levels are a big take back in the procedure as they do not understand the message that is being passed to them. The communication process involves the sender sending the information in codes and the receiver decodes the message upon receiving it. If the latter is not accomplished, then there is said that there has occurred a communication breakdown (Kopp and Osinga 1998: 259). In other words, the community members are only experiencing communication breakdown from the various tools of communication that the World Vision is using. For instance, the inability to read makes the newsletters and pamphlets ineffective and the inability to understand the common English makes the health talks an ineffective route of communication.

Language

Language can indeed prove to be a major source of communication breakdown between a sender and the receiver. In a country, there exist lots of languages varying in vocabularies and their meanings and so the use of a language may prove to be difficult for use in a community that does not use that particular language for communication (Kozar 2014: 75). The World Vision implies language in the communication process and it is also the most important tool for the communication process to work. Despite the fact that there are other forms of communication such as the communication signals like the body language, gestures and facial expression, the ultimate communication is eased by the use of language. Therefore, as a challenge that the World Vision experiences, is the communication breakdown as a result of the variety of languages and the use of a particular language in various communities won’t yield results.
On the other hand, language experiences a synergistic relationship with other sources of the communication breakdowns. This implies that in combination with other sources of communication breakdown, and then they produce an even larger impact. For instance, the language barriers to communication in conjunction with the illiteracy levels of the communities imply that the impact to communication will even be greater. Therefore, the community that is averagely illiterate will be difficult to communicate with considering that the World Vision does not understand thus implies a difficult to manage communication breakdown. This synergistic relationship is not with literacy levels alone but with others and so the best way is to handle and solve the language barrier. The terms of communication that World Vision in Australia employs should therefore ensure that the aspect of language is handled before trying to communicate to the communities.

Culture

Apart from language barriers and illiteracy, culture can also lead to several forms of communication breakdown between the World Vision and the Australian communities. Culture encompasses several aspects in the life of a human being generally includes the normal way of life that one follows every day. The traditions that run the normal patterns of the individuals’ lives can typically hinder the communication or more precisely the flow of information (Mulescu 2014: 692). The various religions that are supported in Australia might not be incompatible to the various aspects of the remedies that the World Vision is proposing for the families to do for their children. For instance, some religions do not allow the children and even the family members to go to hospital and so the proposition that the World Vision is imposing on that particular Australian community will automatically not heed this advice and see it as a sin.
Culture sometimes proves to be the driver for the lives of the members of a community. The way we eat for instance is determined by the culture that we inherited from our parents who in turn adopted from their parents before them and so on. The roots of such cultures are so deep within us that it can indeed be brutally painful to uproot them. Therefore, the pains of communication comes in the sense that the particular member of the community has the inability to see the particular error in his way since he considers that the culture is always rights since it has always been like that for their families. The World Vision will therefore face hardships in trying to convince these families to change their ways and in particular, those that are driven by culture. In this angle, the eating behaviors and the foods that they eat especially those that are for children are thus the most difficult to advice and so communication breakdown is imminent.

Complex messages

Considering that the community members are not professionals in the various fields that the World Vision seeks to communicate to them about, the use of complex message signals might lead to a communication breakdown. The use of complex terminologies to relate to the community members only implies that the community will be unable to decode the messages sent to them as per the communication process of sending and receiving of the messages. The community will thus acquire nothing form the World Vision if a health talk was the target intervention for that particular community. In other words, World Vision requires to ensure that the messages are simplified as possible to ensure that the signals the community receives is within the capacity that the commoner that has not gone to school can perceive. In other words, the simpler the language used, the easier it is to understand.

Disregard to the specific needs of the community

The purpose of communication for a Christian organization such as the World Vision is to address the needs for the community as distinguished by the relevant studies. However, the poor technology and poor data collection methods, or at other times, the use of incompetent workers to seek for information from the community leads to the wrong sets of data being collected (Bruinessen et al. 2013: 2809). Therefore, during the application of the intervention to the very community where the research was carried out, the results end up being catastrophic as the World Vision won’t be addressing the needs of the community. Rather, the targeted population needs are still there yet the interventions applied don’t seem to work. In such a situation, community talks regarding the researched issue will result to a communication breakdown in the communication process.

Recommendations

Upon recognizing the flaws in the communication process especially regarding the flow of information from the source (World Vision) to the respondents, the community, the World Vision is recommended to employ local workers from the various communities. These community works are to be educated and trained accordingly and using their knowledge of the locality and language, and the technology and skills acquired from the World Vision, they can assist in passing the information to the community in the easiest possible way (Paluck et al. 2003: 383). In addition, the World Vision should ensure that the technologies and skills employed in the field are as required in the sense that the errors in collection of the information and data for use by the organization. Furthermore, the World Vision in Australia should seek to improve the number of employees that would correct even more data specific to that community at the highest level possible and so the organization can seek to address the specific needs of the community.
The World Vision is faced by communication breakdown as a result of the various barriers to effective communication. For instance, language is among these barriers and it seeks to imply that the World Vision in Australia is in trouble while not loaded with an appropriately trained professional that understands the language. Similarly, literacy levels are another success-degrading aspect in the sense that it makes the respondents not to be able to decode the message being sent to them leading to communication breakdown. Culture is also another source of communication breakdown and needs to be addressed by the organization. The aspect of language can be solved by employing and training local professionals who understand the local language and culture. In a nutshell, the World Vision in Australia needs to assess and eliminate these forms of communication barriers before trying to communicate with the community.

References

Bruinessen, I, Weel-Baumgarten, E, Gouw, H, Zijlstra, J, Albada, A, & Dulmen, S 2013, 'Barriers And Facilitators To Effective Communication Experienced By Patients With Malignant Lymphoma At All Stages After Diagnosis', Psycho-Oncology, 22, 12, Pp. 2807-2814, Academic Search Premier, Ebscohost, Viewed 22 March 2015.
Kopp, & Osinga 1998, 'Breakdowns In Communication In Health Care: A Legal Analysis', International Journal Of Risk & Safety In Medicine, 11, 4, P. 259, Academic Search Premier, Ebscohost, Viewed 22 March 2015.
Kozar, O 2014, 'The "Language Barrier" In Private Online Tutoring', European Education, 46, 2, Pp. 74-96, Academic Search Premier, Ebscohost, Viewed 22 March 2015.
Miulescu, V 2014, 'Communication And Culture: Cultural Paradigms And Referentials', Contemporary Readings In Law & Social Justice, 6, 1, Pp. 691-700, Academic Search Premier, Ebscohost, Viewed 22 March 2015.
Paluck, E, Green, L, Frankish, C, Fielding, D, & Haverkamp, B 2003, 'Assessment Of Communication Barriers In Community Pharmacies', Evaluation & The Health Professions, 26, 4, Pp. 380-403, Academic Search Premier, Ebscohost, Viewed 22 March 2015.