Social and Behaviour Change
Leveraging contextual insights and community engagement to empower marginalized groups and champion children's rights in LAC region
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Why Social and Behaviour Change?
UNICEF works around the world to ensure every child and adolescent can thrive, growing up healthy and free from harm. In the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region where children face unique challenges which put them apart from their rights, the role of Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) is to create environments where every child can flourish. This means ensuring health and well-being, protecting them from all the forms of violence, providing access and quality education and water and sanitation resilience against climate change, gender equality and opportunities to reach their full potential.
SBC in LAC is a core organization programme implementation strategy that extends beyond information dissemination; it aims for the full participation of individuals and communities to ignite tangible behavioural and social shifts.
Recognizing that genuine impact requires collaborative efforts, SBC in UNICEF in LAC region works closely with families, religious and community leaders, frontline workers, the private sector, and academic institutions to leverage their strengths and dismantle individual and social barriers hindering positive outcomes and at the same time, strengthening system and services. Through Social and Behaviour Change methods, UNICEF strongly considers ancient indigenous wisdom and blend it with scientific insights, empowering communities to assume control over their well-being.
In this region there are key constrains which prevents the countries to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, and children, adolescents and women to fulfill their rights. These barriers are predominantly grounded in social and cultural practices and social and gender norms. In child protection, for example, the toxic and harmful masculinity, the parenting approaches of normalization of harmful practices, including violence against children within families and schools, are at the basis of the violence against children and women which positions LAC as the most violent region in the world.
In health, the lack of trust in the vaccines by parents and caregivers, the lack of knowledge and low risk perception by families of diverse topics, e.g. breastfeeding, adequate nutrition and adolescent pregnancy represent relevant risks for children to survive and thrive in most of the countries of this region.
In both cases SBC plays a pivotal role in supporting individual and community behaviours and influencing social and gender norms towards sustainable changes.
In the field of Social and Behaviour Change, bottlenecks such as "Social Norms" and "Sociocultural Practices and Beliefs" that do not allow the development and access to rights of children and adolescents, are especially notable in countries with great cultural diversity and social complexity. These obstacles limit the access and effectiveness of services, as well as the rights of children and adolescents, underscoring the need to address these challenges to achieve effective changes in each country.
How is Social and Behaviour Change supporting the region with sustainable changes?
The Social Sciences behind SBC has its roots in the Latin America and the Caribbean, therefore, at the heart of SBC performed in this region lies a deep root of theories, approaches and experiences which derives from the rich visions and learning from the work with communities.
Understanding of the foundations of SBC allows the practitioners to be better equipped with knowledge and interventions which consider the contexts and dynamics of each community. It involves tailoring people-centric approaches to surmount hurdles obstructing the thriving of children and women, especially those at risk and underserved. Whether tackling issues such as school dropout rates, corporal punishment, or lack of trust in immunization obesity and overweight, UNICEF acknowledges that the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and sustainable changes necessitates addressing environmental, social, and behavioural dimensions.
With an expanding agenda encompassing development and humanitarian contexts, programmes consistently encounter the challenge of prioritizing investments to yield the greatest impact. But sustained transformation in behaviour and society becomes truly impactful when coupled with comprehensive shifts in the broader socio-economic landscape where families and communities reside. Initiating such change entails addressing fundamental factors such as governmental policies, gender disparities, and representation systems.
Individual transformations are inseparable from broader social shifts and collective endeavors. Fostering both individual and social change requires placing people at the core of programmes, from their inception through implementation and evaluation phases. This entails engaging communities at every stage of planning, refining interventions through iterative and participatory processes, and assessing the attained social and behavioural outcomes.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, UNICEF is dedicated to promote enduring changes in values and behaviours to enhance children's quality of life.
Through strengthening systems and fostering coalitions around a strong academia landscape, SBC approaches engaging communities at grassroots levels, ensuring local and cultural specificities and perspectives are integrated into programmes. They also amplify community voices and connect them to policy advocacy at higher levels while mobilizing civil society, community-based organizations, faith groups, and social networks, to empower traditionally marginalized groups.
Resources
- Latin American perspectives in support of Social and Behaviour Change | UNICEF SBC GUIDANCE
- The Best Practices in Social and Behaviour Change
- Repositorio de Buenas Prácticas de CSC (in Spanish)
- SBCC Summit LAC sessions
- UNICEF's SBC Global page
- SBC Guidance
- Impact data cards
- Knowledge at UNICEF
- Social and Behaviour Change Learning Channel
- SBC YouTube channel
- Compendios de mejores prácticas de Cambio Social y de Comportamiento (in Spanish)