Nosh Nalavala, Founder and Executive Director of MediaGlobal, is a global communications and public information specialist. He believes in and advocates a positive vision to alleviating poverty, disease, hunger and the impact of earth changes in the world’s poorest countries by creating awareness in the global media to the suffering of the men, women, and children in these vulnerable countries. In his work for the United Nations, he has conceptualized, created and implemented public information programs on development issues, conducted advocacy and outreach programs, and worked with specialized agencies to create media strategies.
He has over 35 years of experience in communications and over 8 years of work in the field of development.
Before he founded Media for Global Development – MediaGlobal – he created image-branding strategies for the United Nations Development Programme through a print publication, UNDP NEWS, distributed within the United Nations system, financial institutions, international donors and academia.
He achieved extensive visibility in the media for the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries and spearheaded an aggressive awareness campaign for an increase of official development assistance (ODA) and debt relief through media advocacy. Among donor countries, ODA has increased and 5 countries have already reached the target of allocating 0.7 per cent of gross national product. Debt relief of $54 billion has been committed under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and the World Bank announced recently it would forgive a total of $40 billion in debt owed by 18 least developed countries, most of them in Africa.
Nosh Nalavala conducted advocacy and communications campaigns on issues of poverty, HIV/AIDS and debt relief for 50 countries, 34 in Africa, considered vulnerable/least-developed by the United Nations. As officer overseeing global media communications, he Implemented information campaigns and incorporated campaign messages and themes into all relevant events and programmes conducted by UNDP, DESA and other United Nations agencies mainstreaming the Brussels Programme of Action.
He supervised the preparation of a variety of public information products in support of least-developed countries by the Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries; drafted materials for United Nations publications and the press, including a compendium of “Best Practices in Least Developed Countries”.
At the United Nations, he organized media coverage and arranged media briefings and interviews and developed outreach activities for landlocked developing and small island developing countries.
He worked with several United Nations agencies on communications planning, including media relations, radio programme production and broadcasting, television and photographic coverage, website creation and maintenance and public outreach.
In January 2005, he organized and conducted successful media events for the International Conference of Small Island Developing States sponsored by the United Nations in Mauritius.
He launched MediaGlobal in 2006. The media company partners with the United Nations and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on raising the consciousness of the media worldwide to the constraints of the world’s poorest countries. Both the UN and UNDP have since signed onto a media initiative, GLOBAL MEDIA COMPACT, launched in October 2006 by the United Nations and MediaGlobal.
