Some Excellent Resources from IDRC

Greetings again. I hope you had a good week.

This week our spring semester began. I’m teaching a lot this semester.

I’m also trying to finish some writing that I had hoped to finish between semesters. I once read a sign that said (in incorrect but clear English), “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” Sometimes I feel that way. Do you?

One thing made my week easier: Julie Walker at INASP introduced me to a “Toolkit for Researchers” from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

“Aha!” I thought. “Now I have a good topic for my blog post.”

The IDRC toolkit contains 7 PowerPoint presentations:

• “How to Become a Strategic Communicator”
• “How to Build a Slide Presentation”
• “How to Deal with the Media”
• “How to Do a TV Interview”
• “How to Make Effective Presentations”
• “How to Write a Policy Brief”
• “How to Write for the Web”

The presentations are available online in both English and French. They are well designed and contain good advice. Conveniently, most of them end with checklists.

While viewing the IDRC website, I found another helpful resource: the Style Guide for IDRC Editors and Proofreaders. This resource provides guidance on items such as word choice, punctuation, and figure and table design. It also says what proofreading is and how to do it.

Although the Style Guide focuses on the IDRC way of doing things, most of the content applies to other settings too.

I encourage you to look at these resources.