Capacity sharing for social change: One story, three lessons.
In the West and Central Africa Region, colleagues from UNICEF regional and country offices have engaged in a two-year capacity sharing exercise (and experiment), called the Social and Behaviour Change Certification Series.
Below we begin with a short story introducing the series, and then share some lessons we learned after some early mistakes, which were both eye-opening and generative.
The story begins at Level 5.
Congratulations! You are a pioneer and have reached the final level of the Social and Behaviour Change Certification Series. You have completed the session on adult learning (andragogy, if we want to get fancy). You have organized and completed a two-hour practice session with your colleagues, friends, cousins…soccer team? Let’s call them your volunteer participants. You may have made some minor mistakes, but you learned something new, and you’re now ready to put all five levels of the certification series into action. Let’s take a quick tour of the previous steps bringing you to this final level. Feel free to share with others the two key resources with you: “A Practical Guide to Workshop Magic” (20 pages) and the “Pocket Guide to Adult Learning” (14 slides).
For Level 4 you reflected on meaningful and transparent community engagement. What does it look like, and feel like? What does it mean to invite participation, to create opportunities for the contributions of others? How can we avoid involving people in superficial ways, as a “tick-the-box” exercise, as decoration. Tokenistic inclusion is a form of manipulation. Better NO participation than flimsy participation. In the Level 4 session you exchanged with peers and did practical exercises. The “ladder of participation” (adapted below) was a key resource shared, and was included in the Community Engagement Pocket Guide.
Level 3 was all about action. You put into practice some of the tactics presented in Level 2, which covered Behavioural Insights and Gamification, and Level 1, which gave brief overviews of Collective Change, Human Centered Design and Positive Difference (also called “Positive Deviance”).
We won’t go into all the details of our five-level SBC Certification series, but we did want to capture some lessons and mistakes — as these might have “nutritional value” for those reading this.
We’ll make this quick, starting with the three key lessons:
- Lesson one: On skill set and mindset. We began the Social and Behaviour Change certification series as a way to support colleagues in the West and Central Africa Region as UNICEF expanded from Communication for Development (C4D), to include new approaches, tools, and tactics. We realized halfway through our series that we might benefit from discussions on mindset to complement our existing focus on skill sets.
- Lesson two, on adaptability of resources: In the SBC Certification Series we pull extensively from a set of “Intro Guides” on human rights-based approaches to Social and Behaviour Change. Even though the guides were co-authored through extensive participation at country level, and exist in four languages, we still needed adaptable resources so that colleagues and partners could improve the tools, shorten them, and/or add nuances that fit their contexts. Having short, synthesized versions of resources was a key priority. We often asked ourselves: “What is the minimum viable content?” and “Does this have enough nutritional value to be useful to someone?” From these lessons, adaptable “Pocket Guides” were born. This informal SBC library has links for all versions — feel free to adapt, edit, cut, and improve at will!
- Lesson three, on language: As we began implementing our SBC Certification series we realized we were learning just as much as participants (if not more). We wanted to avoid terms that seemed overly “one-way.” We now use “sharing” in place of strengthening or building capacity.
Throughout the capacity sharing series, we used Sherry Arnstein’s classic model, the “Ladder of Participation” (1969), as a core resource to spark exchange and debate.
A key question we raised: “As a human rights organization, why is it that at UNICEF, we continue to hear community members being referred to as targets and beneficiaries?”
You can imagine the lively discussions that followed. Colleagues mentioned time constraints, donor pressures, government pressures, lack of resources and many other barriers. We don’t discount these barriers as we continue to seek alignment with our child rights and human rights mandates. For us, this means doing things with communities, not for them (Nothing about us without us!).
The lessons above helped us infuse our sessions and discussions with resources for both a human rights mindset, and Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) skill sets.
We are happy to share these lessons with others who might be contemplating embarking on a capacity sharing series with colleagues, government counterparts, civil society, academia, and/or communities. We welcome any suggestions or new ideas you might have from your own experiences and resources. We are hoping to continue experimenting with capacity sharing, in all shapes, sizes and modalities.
Please do reach out if you want to exchange or “brain-jazz” on a potential collaboration. Feel free to also comment on this essay, or provide inputs in our “suggestion basket” (see link also below).
Do you have suggestions for this list? We welcome your ideas, and any general feedback you might have for us. Click here to share input. (Leave anonymous feedback or name and email if you would like a response). Best regards, UNICEF West and Central Africa Social and Behavior Change Team, Dakar Senegal. With gratitude to colleagues providing ideas, resources and creative inputs for this essay, Marie Josee Deblois and Juan Andres Gil.
