Instant Capacity Sharing Ripple in Côte d’Ivoire
This is a story about embracing a “learner mindset” when promoting social change. [French version here]
It was almost 5pm when a message from the West and Central Africa Regional Office popped up on Yanne Low’s computer. “How are you? Would you have time to discuss the workbook you submitted for level 3 of the Social and Behaviour Change learning series?” After scheduling a call, this Social and Behaviour Change Officer at UNICEF’s Korhogo zonal office in Côte d’Ivoire started wondering: Why would the regional office want to discuss with me?
Yanne had been among the first participants joining level three of the WCAR Social and Behaviour Change Certification Series. She was eager to learn more about human rights-based approaches that go beyond communication to bring about positive social change for children. Levels one and two of the series had facilitated understanding of when and how to use Human Centered Design (HCD), Positive Deviance, Collective Change, Behavioural Insights (BI) and Gamification. She had delivered her workbooks and obtained the corresponding certificates.
Level three, however, seemed a bit more challenging, with exercises entailing practical applications to hypothetical situations. So Yanne had thought that putting several brains together would be a good way to make sure she got it right. What if she turned her exercise workbook into a collaborative learning offer for some of her allies?
Yanne rapidly set up a mini-workshop with a small group of U-Reporters and intern nurses. (Click here to learn more about the digital civic engagement platform U-Report, supported by UNICEF, operating in 99 countries across the world. The Côte d’Ivoire U-Report platform has 4.1 million youth members).
Guided by a natural mindset of humility, respect, openness, true partnership and drive for results, Yanne achieved much more than a learning certificate. She was inviting others into her learning opportunity; she was modeling a different way of looking at capacities of and working with communities. Later on, participants would praise the approach. For the first time they had joined a “training” where they were not simple recipients. Instead, their experience and contribution had been valued as fundamental to build meaning together and take real ownership of the new approaches. As a result, this would spark concrete efforts to extend learning to more peers, and U-Reporters would find their cues to go beyond awareness-raising.
For Yanne, it had been just the natural evolution of things… but now, the unexpected message from the regional office… Should she have completed her workbook by herself? Would she finally get the certificate?
The morning after, she was not sure what to expect. From Dakar, her regional office colleague started asking. “Let me understand, what is it exactly that you did with these people who you mention in the workbook?” But as Yanne went on narrating the experience, she could notice an increasing excitement in the feedback coming from the other side of the phone. More and more questions followed. Her colleague simply wanted to learn about what seemed to be a practice worthy to share.
Earlier this year, the UNICEF regional office Social and Behaviour Change team, based in Dakar Senegal, had started using the term capacity sharing rather than capacity building or strengthening. They were intuitively embracing a new mindset, practicing and progressively becoming aware of its deep implications and impact. All of a sudden, Yanne had emerged as a spontaneous role model. It was a practical realization of an idea still blurry (soon after, the team would discover that the notion of capacity sharing is already in use and well developed by different actors in the humanitarian and development arena — see here for instance).
In addition, Yanne had set the foundation for a speedy expansion to new Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) approaches: she would not wait to consider herself enough of an expert before “training” other actors in SBC. She would start immediately, she would openly accept that she is learning too, they would learn together and from each other. That was undoubtedly a smart move considering that we are all actually learning in SBC.
In this case, nursing students and U-Reporters learned, Yanne learned, the regional office learned, altogether in a brief period of time. They are truly tempted to baptize this as Instant Capacity Sharing Ripple.* (ICSR)
And, of course, Yanne received her well-deserved level three certificate, with distinction!
Note: Ripple (horizontal) aligns better with a human rights mindset than Cascade (top-down). Also, we noted that the acronym for Instant Capacity Sharing Cascade (ICSC) would generate confusion with the International Civil Service Commission 😉
Note: Hello reader! Click here to share observations and suggestions. We value feedback and opportunities to learn. From: The Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) team, UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office (Dakar Senegal)
For more short essays on social change: See Exchange №1, and Exchange №2
