SAMPLE INVITATION LETTER
Many thanks for completing the online questionnaire and also participating in an interview as part of the research consultancy we are undertaking on behalf of Plan International for the UNISDR Global Assessment Report 2015 (GAR15). As you will recall, we are focusing on disaster risk reduction (DRR) curriculum development in four Asian countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Pakistan) and on the role of development agencies in influencing disaster risk reduction curriculum provision.
We found your questionnaire and especially our interview conversation rich, insightful and thought provoking. In consequence, We would like to invite you to take part in a Delphi Forecasting panel as a final stage in our data collection process
It is a very simple process. By this message, we are asking you to write a short piece of no more than one page giving us your reflections on and proposals for the potential future role of development agencies in promoting, helping foster and support the implementation DRR curriculum in your country, especially curriculum that is integrated with safe school initiatives, disaster management and community action.
The written piece can be simply laid out as a series of bullet point ideas each with brief explanation. The ideas do not have to be restricted to what you see as immediately possible and practicable but can be a vision of the future role of agencies (maybe with a few ideas about how the vision could be made real).
The process goes like this:
- If you accept this invitation, please send us your one-pager by Friday 31 January
- We will collect all the contributions received together, make them anonymous, and send the collection of pages out to you and all panel members
- The next step is for you to read the collected pages, then write a no more than one page reaction to and reflection on the ideas you read (agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, elaborating), and send it to us by Tuesday 4 February
- Again, we will collect the responses together, make them anonymous and send the collection to you
- You to write a paragraph of closing reflections on the collected responses and send it to us by Thursday 6 February.
This Delphi Forecasting approach is an exciting and very time effective way of collecting together insights on the future and sparking exciting new ideas through a share-and-react process. You may well find it a very interesting and rewarding experience, with learning benefits for everyone involved! We will send you an anonymous copy of the set of closing reflections.
We very much hope you will accept this invitation to participate and look forward to receiving your first one-pager by Friday. In the meantime, could you confirm your acceptance by brief return email?