Samenvatting

United Network of Young Peacebuilders is a non-governmental youth organisation working on issues such as peacebuilding and conflict transformation. It is a network organisation consisting of 49 member organisations around the world. The network is steered by the Secretariat, the International Steering Group and the board.
As a global network, communication is one of the biggest challenges that UNOY Peacebuilders faces. The member organisations are spread across the world and information needs to be fluently disseminated to many different audiences. Therefore, a well-written and implemented communication plan is important. However, in the case of UNOY Peacebuilders, the communication plan has not been fully implemented and communication within the network does not function as efficiently as it should.
The current communication plan itself is the biggest obstacle hampering implementation. Most parts of the plan have not been clearly formulated and it is too vague to be of practical use to the organisation. Especially the target audiences need to be defined in much more detail to ensure that information is of use to all target groups. Furthermore, the plan is missing a monitoring and evaluation component which makes it difficult to see whether the communication activities are actually making a difference.
In addition, there is a need to make communication within the network more interactive. The website is one of the main channels which can be improved in order to foster two-way communication more efficiently. This can be done, for example, by making contact details to the Secretariat more visible and by updating information more often. Communication with the ISG should also be improved to ensure that they are more aware of things going on in the Secretariat. Moreover, by doing more research on the external publics, it will be easier to target information in order to make sure that all audiences are getting the information that is most useful for them.
The improved communication plan can finally be implemented by including an action plan in the plan itself. This means that all the communication objectives in the plan are broken into a series of actions that need to be carried out in order to achieve the objectives. An action plan is a clear overview of all the different tasks required to implement the communication plan and makes it easier to take the plan from words to action.