Statistical Communication and Advocacy Capacity Building for the National Statistical System (NSS) in the British Virgin Islands (BVI)

Improving the capacity of OECS Member States to effectively empower citizens with data and statistics continues to be the focus of the OECS Statistical Services Unit.

A workshop in statistical communication and advocacy was recently held with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), as well as other relevant departments and persons in the national statistical system who can play a critical role in promoting, raising awareness of and disseminating statistics.

The training exercise, which lasted from 29 April - 2 May 2019, covered the areas of Communications Planning, Events Planning, Media Relations, Social Media and Data Visualisation.

The objectives of the workshop were:

1. orient the new BVI National Statistics Communication and Advocacy Team to lead in the implementation of the OECS Communication and Advocacy Strategy;
2. introduce key information and capacity building tools to support statistical communication and advocacy activities to enhance the visibility and awareness of statistics and the CSO;
3. ensure the stakeholders within the NSS are adequately sensitised regarding the importance and application of statistical communication and advocacy;
4. empower and equip statisticians to better communicate with the media and other target audiences; and
5. provide technical guidance to draft a respondent’s communications plan for the BVI Survey of Living Conditions and Household Budget Survey.

The training was facilitated by Loverly Anthony, OECS Statistical Development Officer for Statistical Communication and Advocacy; and Shervone Alexander, Senior Statistician and Chairperson of the OECS Statistical Communication and Advocacy Group. Ms Alexander provided practical insight by sharing experiences from the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Statistical Office’s journey on planning and implementing a successful communication and advocacy campaign for their Survey of Living Conditions and Household Budget Survey.

This workshop forms part of the ongoing support provided to OECS Member States to empower citizens with data by strengthening national capacity to increase awareness and support for statistics by bringing the messages of official statistics to a more diverse audience and bringing renewed energy to the promotion of official statistics.