Transcript The good, the bad and the ugly

Reflections of 20 years of proving that what we do works
 1999 CSC position paper by Denise Grey-Felder
(Rockerfeller) and James Deane (Panos Institute) after
meetings in Bellagio (1997)and Cape Town (1998)
 The document outlines the following SBBC principles:
 To move away from people as the objects for change … and
on to people and communities as the agents of their own
change
 ¨ Away from designing, testing and delivering
messages…and on to supporting dialogue and debate on
the key issues of concern
 ¨ Away from the conveying of information from technical
experts… and on to sensitively placing that information
into the dialogue and debate
 ¨ Away from a focus on individual behaviors…and on to
social norms, policies, culture and a supportive
environment
 ¨ Away from persuading people to do something …and on
to negotiating the best way forward in a partnership
process
Communication for Development Report of the 8th UN
Roundtable, Nicaragua 2001
“The long-term goals for communicators included improved
inter-agency collaboration in areas such as education and
communication in reproductive health for adolescents, the
retention of prevention, care and mitigation of the impact of the
epidemic high on participants’ agendas, and strengthened
alliances between governments and civil societies to maintain
progress on such themes as rights, gender equity and social
equality and reproductive and sexual health.”
The Rome Consensus 2007
“Communication for Development is a social process based
on dialogue using a broad range of tools and methods. It is
also about seeking change at different levels including
listening, building trust, sharing knowledge and skills,
building policies, debating and learning for sustained and
meaningful change. It is not public relations or corporate
communication”
Rome Consensus shared body of evidence of the value for
Communication for Development. Examples shared were:
 India Radio Farm Forum from 1959
 FGC in Senegal – reduction by 33% attributed to
participatory communication
 Dealing with corruption in Uganda resulting in a reduction
of funds that do not deal reach local levels from 80% to 20%
 Individuals
 Partners
 Funders e.g DFID Funding for SBCC regional project
 SBCC as a professional field with professional courses
offered at different institutions
 Non- formal capacity building opportunities
 Innovation
 Creation of Brands
 Governments support
 We recognised a long time ago that context matters for
change to take place
 We also recognised that while we use products and tools to
communicate messages to influence, change behaviour,
SBCC or C4D is about a social process of engagement,
debate, reflection and practice.
 Even when we use the ecological model, our practise
defies what we say
 Most of what we do focuses on individual behaviour
change and less so on the social part (the community
norms and the broader socio-economic -political sphere)
 For example, we do not question why women are at the
bottom of the social strata and work with them to place
their voice at the center, we develop tools to make them
cope better with their situation
 If we really believed in the social, we would have
supported and strengthened social movements more than
we have and in some instances created a social revolution
 We know that we need to evaluate our work and prove that
it works
 How can we do so if we continue to use RCT as the golden
standard for evaluations?
 There are very few studies that test the effectiveness of
behavioural interventions to reduce risk using behavioural
and biomedical endpoints
 We never point to the limitations of the evaluation methods,
rather to communications
 All reporting to 2 major funders around HIV is how many
people did we reach with various packages
 Focus on counting
 Context and quality not taken into account
 Blanket implementation in a community – rigid
 Time lines very short
 Assumption that change is a mechanical linear process
 Qualitative assessment never included.
Interaction with
community & service
delivery
Soul City 4
Resonance,
identification
Edutainment vehicle
Partnership with
NNVAW
Point of
reference
Community
action and
events
Community
Shapes,
supplements
reinforces
health and
development
messages
Collective efficacy
Acknowledge
and support
Community leaders
and service
providers
More open
communication
More caring
service delivery,
better
understanding of
issues
“People
Talking”
Change in own
awareness, attitudes
Change in
policy and
practice
Services
Community structures,
organizations,
institutions
Perceive
norms to
change
Connect
people to …
How is funding and supporting community based outcomes? -
 WHO ARE WE – CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS OR
SERVICE PROVIDERS/IMPLEMENTERS?
 Funders setting the agenda
 Length of funding
 Bilateral decisions with governments
 NGO’s reduced to service providers
 How we evaluate what we do
 Who tells us what works/what does not work?
 Consistency of principles of partnerships and decision making –
where does power really lie? Who controls the agenda?
 What is the relationship here?
 Where is the command center if we open country offices?
 Capacity – by whose definition?
 Money and governance issues
 Local NGO’s as training grounds for big international organizations
 The media landscape is evolving
 Social media as an important platform suggest that we can
reach audiences on different platforms but we must also
reach them differently.
 The role of the expert with neat messages is also
questioned – we are yet to harness this successfully
 Let’s bring back the social into SBCC