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Biographical note:

Joan Ross Frankson is an information and communication specialist in women, gender, and development. As a journalist, writer/editor, trainer, and researcher, she has worked in small press publishing; radio, television, and print journalism; public relations; popular education; and project design, planning, management, implementation, and iassessment. For the last 20 years,

she has focussed her skills in the development field particularly in building advocacy skills at the community level and in re-packaging research and policy documents into visual and accessible tools for use in political education and action. Between 1975 and 1994, she worked in the West Indies, mainly in Jamaica. She came to the US in 1994 to be the International Women's Tribune Center's communications coordinator for the Beijing Conference, and followed that with editorial jobs at Ms. Magazine and the UN Development Program. She is currently Communications Director at WEDO (Women's Economic and Development Organization), an international advocacy organization that seeks to increase the power of women worldwide at all levels in government, institutions, and forums to achieve economic and social justice, a healthy and peaceful planet, and human rights for all. She has edited eleven training manuals and guides, and produced many newsletters. Her daughter, Leone Ross, is a prize-winning novelist in London.

Bibliography:

• "Prostitution in Jamaica: Effects of the Economic Crisis." Institute of Social and Economic Research Occasional Papers. Presented March 1987 at Symposium on Issues Concerning Women, UWI Department of Economics/Freidrich Ebert Stiftung, 1988.
• A Community Animator's Training Manual. Jamaica Cultural Development Organization/Organization of American States, 1992.
• A Community Animator's Guide to Land Issues. Jamaica: Oxfam, 1993.
• "HIV/AIDS Changing Attitudes." A Youth Peer Councilor's Guide. Association for Control of STDs, Government of Jamaica, 1994.
• "A Challenge to the Powerless." In HIV & AIDS: The Global Inter-Connection. Edited by Elizabeth Reid. New York: UNDP/Kumarian Press, 1995.
• "A Women's Global Faxnet Charts the Way." Journal of International Communication. Special issue on International Feminisms (October 1996).
• Moving Policy, Taking Action: Everywoman's Community Toolbox for Implementing the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. New York: IWTC, 1996.