The Commonwealth Secretariat’s Social Transformation Programme Division is concerned with areas such as health, gender and education. Publications that editors4change has helped out on in recent months include a text entitled Development Challenges of Health Epidemics in Small States: Focus on HIV/AIDS. This valuable and informative book provides an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the economic impacts of the epidemic in the Pacific, Southern Africa and the Caribbean.

Education in Small States: policies and priorities is another priced publication from this division that has benefited from editors4change involvement and the expert eyes of its editors.

editors4change has been partnering on an increasing number of projects with the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Governance and Institutional Development Division (GIDD). Texts have included editing the division’s Public Sector Internal Audit in the Caribbean: A Development Strategy for the Region and another in the series of priced publications, The Contract System of Employment for Senior Government Officials: Experiences from the Pacific.

Policy case studies
We have continued to enjoy a special relationship with the Economics Affairs Division (EAD) of the Commonwealth Secretariat, with the team helping out on a series of technical edits of policy case studies for this section during 2011. Check out the following links for more details on these specialist, but highly informative publications:

Issues in Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Small Developing States: A Case Study of the Pacific
Issues in Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Small Developing States: A Case Study of the Caribbean
Macroeconomic Policy Frameworks of Small States: A Case Study of Malta
Partnerships for Sustainable Development in Small States

Brochures and newsletters
editors4change have also assisted the Secretariat’s EAD by copyediting their regular electronic newsletter, Small States Digest, a publication that highlights the specific issues and challenges faced by small states. Recent article topics include climate change in the Caribbean, how small states can make an impact on WTO negotiations and the consequences of migration. We edited their divisional brochure this year and provided assistance in the preparation of papers for presentation at a conference on the G20.

The team at editors4change are just recovering from an extremely busy period in the run up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which took place in Perth, Australia, in October 2011. Many reports and other documents had to be prepared on behalf of various divisions at the Commonwealth Secretariat, keeping us busy throughout the summer and well into the autumn.

Among others, editors4change assisted in some copy writing and the editing of the Secretary-General’s biennial report entitled Resilience: Report of the Commonwealth Secretary-General 2011.

One particularly challenging project saw the team involved in work on behalf of the Secretariat’s Commonwealth Connects programme, conducting interviews and researching source texts and other media to write their 2011 report, ICTs for Good Governance. The text had to conform to a specified table of contents and be written in a manner that would make programme work attractive for continued funding. After much consultation and iterative rounds, this informative and accessible report was presented to the Heads of Government.

We still found time to help our old friends, including several projects for the Commonwealth Secretariat. Without Prejudice: CEDAW and the determination of women’s rights in a legal and cultural context is a major publication, edited by Meena Shivdas and Sarah Coleman. The brief was to bring together 24 separate Word documents to form a single cohesive volume, edited for house style and consistency.

Small States Conference

The Economic Affairs Division of the Secretariat commissioned editors4change to transform a 100,000-word transcript of the Small States Biennial Conference (Marlborough House, London, 28–29 July 2010) into a summary report. We achieved this, distilling the major issues into an accessible and easy-to-read format, which resulted in an attractively presented and accessible document.

Health Ministers Meeting

We were also commissioned by the Social Transformation Programmes Division of the Secretariat to edit the Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting 2010 Report (as we have done in previous years). This involved combining a number of separate documents to form a cohesive final product, edited for consistency, with a comprehensive proof check carried out in layout.

Small States Digest

As another of our regular pieces of work, editors4change continue to perform their magic on articles for the Secretariat’s Economic Affairs Division’s regular electronic newsletter, Small States Digest. The publication highlights the specific issues and challenges faced by small states, providing stakeholders with updates in small states research, policy and overall growth and development.

Developing an e-Health Strategy

Developing an e-Health Strategy: a Commonwealth workbook of methodologies, content and models is yet another example of how the Commonwealth Secretariat has to rise to the challenge of producing new material to help guide its member states in the evolving digital world. editors4change provided a copyedit for style and liaised with the author.

editors4change have been pleased to welcome on board some new clients recently, the first being ethical media network Panos London. Part of a worldwide international development network, Panos produces media and communication projects to encourage the participation of marginalised people in development debates. We were asked to edit several high-profile projects on their behalf including the Economic Growth Media Brief and the Panos Annual Review, plus a policy brief, Unrealised Potentials, Forgotten Priorities: Strengthening reporting on sexual and reproductive health issues and research in the Bangladesh media. Our role in all of these projects was to copyedit for style and consistency, keeping language accessible. Click here for more about Panos.

Dynamics of Rural Transformation

Also new were clients Felicity Proctor Consulting Ltd., working alongside Rimisp (The Latin American Center for Rural Development) in Chile. This important project began with the editing of a conference report (Dynamics of Rural Transformation in Emerging Economies, April 14–16, 2010, New Delhi, India) which was then taken into layout, proof checked and supplied as a PDF for hard-copy printing and online publication.

KIT Development Policy and Practice

Again new to editors4change is KIT Development Policy and Practice, part of the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands. KIT has commissioned us to work on a number of substantial projects, including A Rapid Assessment of HR Requirements and Training Capacity for the Basic Services Sector in Zimbabwe and the Farmer Organization Strategy Review, on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The brief in both these cases was to apply Plain English guidelines to improve flow and accessibility, edit for consistency and liaise with the authors over queries. Find out more about KIT here.

Last year saw editors4change undertaking many smaller pieces of work, as well as the more substantive projects usually highlighted under ‘Clients and case studies’. For example, we helped rapidly expanding and highly successful local training provider, Youthforce, style and edit their resources and workbooks. Check out their fabulous new website here.

We were also asked by the International Diabetes Federation to provide a light edit/proofread on several new guidelines on diabetes management. The first ever guide of its kind, the Global Guideline on Pregnancy and Diabetes was released in October 2009 and can be found under the following link, as can the Guideline on Oral Health for People with Diabetes and Guideline on Self-monitoring of Blood Glucose in Non-insulin Treated Type 2 Diabetes.

2009 saw editors4change working on a number of projects with Plan, from basic proofreading to more challenging editing and restructuring of texts. One such case involved our helping the organisation document its groundbreaking campaign towards achieving birth registration for every child. The winding up of this hugely successful campaign, Count Every Child: The right to birth registration proved to be a crucial report, one that had to achieve exactly the right tone and look, while being easily accessible as a learning resource for others working in the area. Following an initial meeting with the author and campaigners to agree a reworking of the draft text, there followed close ongoing liaison, rewrites and a number of drafts over several months. The resulting attractive report, which shares Plan’s learning and successes from its offices around the world, is an informative and valuable document.