13,549 Shifting Norms: Selections from the SBCC Summit, The Drum Beat, 758, June 6 2018

Norms theory and learning, What works in VAWG prevention, Culturally wise HIV video, Reflection for maternal health, Breaking culture of menstruation silence, Transforming schools, TV drama and gender, IMAGES, Stories for sons, Music for FP, Sport and SRH, Critique of the draft Declaration from a norms perspective, Take the survey

“This conference is organized to understand better what works in shifting social norms, changing behaviors and in amplifying the voice of those who have most at stake in the success of development efforts. And it is designed to wrestle with the profound issues of social justice and agenda setting that affect these decisions….[H]ow much emphasis should be placed on shifting norms and behaviors when power structures, policy environments or lack of services may constitute problems that overwhelm the capacity of individuals or communities to act?”

Some of the presentations at the Summit with a focus on “shifting norms” follow. You can search for others in the collection of all Summit presentations at this link.

• 1. Presentations from the Advancing Research & Practice on Normative Change for Adolescent Sexual & Reproductive Health and Well-being – Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University (GU)

  * Bringing Theory into Social Norms Programming: Conceptual Model for Intervention Design & Evaluation [PDF – begins on page 1]
  Presented by Anjalee Kohli
  * Advancing Learning of Norms Measurement: The What, How, and Where of What We are Up To [PDF – begins on page 22]
  Presented by Betsy Costenbader
  * How Can We Take to Scale Norms-Focused Interventions: Some Considerations [PDF – begins on page 52]
  Presented by Susan Igras
  These presentations describe the work of an international learning collaborative/theory community joining together individuals and organisations who are working on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) norm change initiatives so as to enhance collective efforts, build knowledge, and develop shared tools to promote and guide effective social norm theory, measurement, and practice at scale. One question the collaborative is exploring: What are norms-focused interventions, and how do they differ from other social and behaviour change (SBC) interventions?

• 2. What Works for Social Norm Change to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) [PDF]
  Presented by Sarah McCook, The Equality Institute
  Having explained the concepts of social and gender norms and the connection to VAWG, this presentation shares lessons from practice around creating new positive norms/expectations. For example, awareness campaigns can backfire by sending the message that violence is normal or common. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the term “Imaginarios sociales” is used to mean something like social norms and worldview combined. This framework has been used as the basis for power mapping and developing theories of change. Oxfam is collaborating with 2 partners – Coordinadora de la Mujer & Colectivo Rebeldia – in the co-creation and implementation of the campaign “Actúa”, which was launched in 3 cities in Bolivia in February 2018, with a focus on shifting social norms around romantic love amongst young people – jealousy, control, male protection. It involves a combination of offline and online actions: street art, hip hop, skate, peer-to-peer networks, social experiments, TV celebrity slots, and GIFs, memes, and the Facebook community. Among the learnings so far: Groups of young people are already modelling alternative behaviours and social norms and challenging the status quo. “Make this visible through the campaign!”
• 3. “The Fire Is Coming” Maasai HIV Education Video: Using Cultural Wisdom for Behavioral Change [PDF]
  Presented by Holly Freitas, ReachGlobal
  A project used video to challenge social norms that put the Maasai people, a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, at risk for HIV (example: ongoing “secret” sexual partnerships between married women and warrior boyfriends). Created in partnership with a community-based organisation that was highly motivated to bring HIV prevention messages to their people, the approach involved unscripted orators and actors familiar with the relevant themes presenting culturally relevant stories, songs, analogies, and proverbs that speak of Maasai cultural wisdom. The idea was to embrace social norms that build community solutions; Maasai are collective rather than individual decision makers, and elders in the community and family determine what will be done. A modified Precaution Adoption Process Model (PARM) created a foundation for the SBCC tool, which involved training for facilitators and discussion guides that led to community conversations after videos were screened.
• 4. Addressing Social and Gender Norms to Improve Uptake of Maternal Health Services in Mali: CARE’s Project Hope for Mothers and Newborns (PEMN) [PDF]
  Presented by Anne Sprinkel, CARE
  Social, gender, and power norms in the Mopti context involve social and cultural pressures exerted through key influencers and male-dominated decision-making in Mali. CARE’s Project Hope for Mothers and Newborns (PEMN) utilised a case-control methodology to examine the additive effect of conducting both quality of care and social norm interventions on maternal health care utilisation. The social norms package centred around Critical Reflection and Dialogue (CRD), starting with staff and entailing community involvement through the Keneya [“Health”] Committee. This CRD process, coupled with activities that in themselves challenged norms, “provided an invaluable platform for critical thinking, communication and motivation for change”. In the end, there was a significantly higher incidence of antenatal care (ANC) visits, which took place half a month earlier in the intervention district, as well as a 27-percentage-point difference in women having a safe birth plan prior to delivery.

Click here and follow the instructions to access all the presentations from the Summit.

In order that the numerous Summit presentations are located and accessible as an integral part of a comprehensive platform, network, and community for this field of work, The CI will be incorporating many of them within our Groups process over the next few months. But you can access all of those submitted by presenters at this link at this time.

• 5. Don’t Let a Period End a Sentence, Let It Start a Conversation. A Mixed Method Approach to Unpacking the Role of Social Networks in Social and Behavior Change [PDF]
  Presented by Suruchi Sood, Drexel University
  “Interpersonal communication can alter social norms by first breaking the silence around taboo topics. With continued communication, topics once considered taboo can become common place.” In India, there is a culture of silence around menstruation, with 8% to 67% of adolescent girls never having heard of menstruation before menarche. Among other issues, this reinforces widespread misconceptions that menstrual blood is “dirty” and that women are impure during menstruation. GARIMA is an SBCC intervention with the end goal of fostering an environment where girls can practice adequate menstrual hygiene management (MHM) with dignity. It revolves around participatory social network mapping, which provides a deeper understanding of communication than traditional individual interviews. Through this dialogue, “Adolescent girls talked openly about a taboo topic and shared the type of conversations and messages they received relating to MHM. By hearing how their peers engage with others about menstruation, participants can evaluate where they stand in comparison to their peers and perhaps feel more apt to form new menstruation social network contacts.”
• 6. Transforming Schools to Challenge Social Norms around Violence against Children: The Case of Moldova [PDF]
  Presented by Sergiu Tomsa, UNICEF
  Qualitative research on violence in Moldova, 2014, found that many parents feel the pressure from others to punish their children; if they refuse, they may be perceived as weak. Domestic violence is not seen to be the business of the school, but, instead, a family issue; parents know best. In fact, interfering or reporting violence is seen as socially unacceptable. Many teachers shared the community’s perceptions on violence, so UNICEF – with the Ministry of Education in the driving seat and a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) bringing expertise, including from abroad (Romania) – sought to build schools’ capacities to prevent and address violence as a way to change communities’ expectations on violence. A year of continuous engagement with teachers focused, among other things, on empowering teachers and changing their self-perception (community models and agents of change with the power to influence destinies) and equipping them with guidelines and tools (how to engage with students; how to promote non-violence in schools; how to communicate with parents). Among the results: less tolerance of violence (“I was so blind before! Now I see it clearly.” – teacher). Around 10,000 suspected cases of violence were registered and reported through schools (after 1 year).
• 7. Adhafull: An Evaluation [PDF]
  Presented by Sonia Whitehead, BBC Media Action, Dr. Lauren B. Frank, Portland State University, and Dr. Joyee S. Chatterjee, Asian Institute of Technology
  Implemented by BBC Media Action with funding from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), AdhaFULL is a “whodunit” television drama with goals including altering the way young people in India see themselves and influencing the expectations that are set for them by their reference networks (e.g., family, friends, and other local people of influence). One research question: What influence (if any) did AdhaFULL have on girls’ and boys’ rejection of established gender norms? Researchers were encouraged to see that change (especially among boys) is possible after a short viewing, but gender norms are entrenched and measurement tricky.
• 8. IMAGES in Tanzania: Adolescent Attitudes & Social Norms About Relationships & Violence [PDF]
  Presented by Nina Ford, Promundo-US, and Cari Jo Clark, Emory University
  IMAGES (International Men and Gender Equality Survey) is a comprehensive study on men’s and women’s realities, attitudes, and practices across a wide range of gender-related topics. As part of IMAGES, over 60,000 interviews have been carried out in more than 30 countries; the resulting data are used to inform evidence-based programming and advocacy efforts. In Tanzania, IMAGES tested a cross-level interaction between village-level norms and young men’s attitudes on young men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV). One conclusion: Collective empirical expectations may be related to young men’s IPV perpetration. IMAGES was found to be a promising social norms measurement tool, but formal psychometric testing is needed.

• You might also be interested in:
  The Drum Beat 757 – Amplifying Voice: Selections from the SBCC Summit

• 9. Share Your Story [PDF]
  Presented by Richa Singh, Breakthrough India
  The Indian human rights organisation Breakthrough uses arts, media, pop culture, and community mobilisation to bring gender issues into the mainstream and to create an alternative narrative for change. Instead of family conversations centred around how girls should avoid getting sexually harassed, the “Share Your Story” campaign asked parents to challenge the norm that “Boys will be boys” by using social media and open letters to tell their sons their own stories of being harassed and speaking up about it. The campaign was picked up by other media platforms, which helped increase its reach.
• 10. Get It Together Music Video [PDF]
  Presented by Babafunke Fagbemi, Center for Communication and Social Impact
  The Get It Together campaign of the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) aimed to improve family planning (FP) visibility and make it a social norm in Nigeria. It strategically addressed low use of modern methods through demand creation efforts such as community mobilisation and radio, featuring the campaign’s FP song “Get It Together”. The song positions someone who uses FP as a “Person wey sabi”, who understands that modern FP methods are safe, available, and effective, and who is willing to share the correct facts about FP.
• 11. Changing Gender Norms, Improving Health: Sports-based Sexual Reproductive Health Programme Research in Lagos, Nigeria [PDF]
  Presented by Ilana Cohen, Grassroot Soccer
  Youth Empowerment and Development Initiative (YEDI) is an adolescent health organisation working to educate, empower, and inspire youth and community development in Nigeria. YEDI is guided by Grassroot Soccer’s sport-based behaviour change methodology. Sport carries the risk of reinforcing harmful norms (e.g., toughness and sexual performance are central to notions of masculinity and undermine the health of both men and women), yet football (soccer)-based approaches can provide a great entry point for reaching adolescent boys if done intentionally. Session themes in Level Up, the coach development programme, focus on: rights and national legal frameworks, gender-equitable household labour, cycles of violence, peer pressure among adult men, fatherhood, active listening, health services, employment, and alcohol use. In the opening session of the SKILLZ Guyz Team, players and coaches get to know each other, discuss the meaning of manhood, and build their team through free-play soccer. A 20-item pre-post questionnaire delivered immediately before and after intervention (n=351) found that items measuring attitudes, such as “It’s the male responsibility to make decisions in a relationship”, had the highest percentage change.
• 12. Critique of the draft Summit Declaration – Norms themes

  The draft Summit Declaration was shared for critique and comment. Critique from the “norms” perspective included:

  * from Rachel Marcus: “…the point was made in a number of sessions I attended that design and messaging often inadvertently reinforces gender stereotypes and norms. The declaration recognises the role SBCC has played in combating gender discrimination but it is not specifically mentioned in pledges to action. I would therefore urge the declaration team to include a specific commitment to gender-transformative SBCC…”

  * from Nicola Harford: “I believe there needs to be explicit mention of the role of the media in the summit declaration….This is vital…to recognise the wider role of media in shaping and reinforcing the behaviours and norms which are the focus of our attentions, and in providing platforms for citizen engagement…”

  See more at Draft – Summit Declaration – FOR YOUR REVIEW AND COMMENT!

Full list of the CI Partners:
ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Citurna TV, Fundación Imaginario, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Heartlines,Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP), MISA, Open Society Foundations, Oxfam Novib, PAHO, The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNICEF, Universidad de los Andes,World Health Organization (WHO), W.K. Kellogg Foundation

The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Chair of the Partners Group: Garth Japhet, Founder, Soul City garth@heartlines.org.za

Executive Director: Warren Feek wfeek@comminit.com