Shifting Norms, Changing Behavior, Amplifying Voice: What Works? - The 2018 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit - Framing Document

"This conference will not only showcase different interventions, but also critique them with a view to enabling better processes to assess and generate insight around what we know about what works. Ultimately, it will seek to determine what it takes to ensure that policy and decision makers in the development sector feel sufficiently confident to invest decisively in strengthening the field."

This framing document provides an outline of the background, rationale, and objectives of the SBCC Summit being planned for April 2018 with the title “Shifting Norms, Changing Behavior, Amplifying Voice: What Works?”  The document is designed to guide the focus and outcomes of the conferences, as well as the selection of discussions and presentations that will form part of the programme. The summit is being convened by a consortium of international and local partners including: the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, The Communication Initiative, Soul City Institute, UNICEF, and BBC Media Action.

As explained in the document, the 2018 Summit builds on the previous Summit held in Ethiopia in February 2016 which looked at the “Art and Science of Social and Behavior Change” and concentrated on highlighting the diversity and richness of different social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) approaches being used. This conference will focus on making sense of this diversity and especially on understanding which approaches work best.

The document highlights how this is an important time for the field of SBCC with, for example, digital technologies changing the way people can communicate. In addition, there is increasing recognition and acknowledgement that access to information has an impact on development success - especially with recent experiences from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa demonstrating the importance of communication and citizen engagement. The demand for a focus on media and communication is also becoming more apparent due to increasing global challenges such as shrinking civic space, violent extremism, refugees and migrants, and climate change. Overall, it points out the importance of SBCC in relation to the SDGs and other development targets, and how these all demand strategies that will enable and empower people to be engaged, and allow them to adapt behaviours and norms for a better life. 

However, despite this, the field of SBCC continues to be “poorly funded, under-utilised and badly planned, bolted on to programmes as an afterthought.” Fundamentally, therefore, the conference will address the key reasons why SBCC continues to struggle to arrive at the heart of development action.  One reason is that the field is considered complex, diverse and difficult to make sense of.  Another is that it is not clear what approaches really work and what investments in SBCC programming can expect to deliver. These challenges therefore form the main focus of the conference.

To reflect this, the conference is divided into the following interconnecting strands:

1. What works
This principal strand of the conference will focus on what works in shifting norms, changing  behaviours and amplifying voice. Presentations, sessions and posters will be encouraged to present not only their work and results, but to reflect on what worked (what was it about their theory of change, their approach, their innovation or creativity, their capacity to adapt, formats, etc.) in enabling them to achieve their objectives, what did not work, how they know what worked, and whether their impact was sustainable.

2. Making sense of now
A series of panels and debates will be organised to better understand the current state of SBCC in relation to current development challenges, and to reflect on how SBCC is organised and conceptualised. It will, for example, encourage dialogue and discussion around diverse strands of social and behaviour change communication approaches including socio-ecological models, human-centred design, behavioural economics, and digital first strategies.

3. Voice and Agenda setting
A series of conversations will be organised to look to the future and will be designed to: identify what policies need to be created or changed; identify the conditions that are needed to ensure greater investment in SBCC; relate this work to larger power structures and policy environments; and generate stronger South-South and South-North cooperation.