QUDWA
Evoking transformational change for children and women through social mobilization
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- العربية
What is QUDWA?
QUDWA is Lebanon’s first national Social and Behavioural Change and Communication (SBCC) plan. Developed by UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA) as part of the Strategic Plan (2020-2027) for the Protection of Women and Children, the plan’s name derives from the Arabic word for a role model as it engages and gives ownership to community members to uphold children’s rights and enable a protective environment for them.
What are QUDWA's objectives?
QUDWA aims to address the root causes of harmful practices against girls, boys, and women while encouraging behaviours and norms that promote their wellbeing, dignity, and equality. QUDWA intends to help prevent child labour, child marriage and violence against girls, boys and women. In particular, it targets a reduction of such trends among Lebanon’s disparate communities by incorporating sustainable and protective practices.
What are QUDWA’s initiatives?
QUDWA contains several initiatives and activities that support community dialogue and creates a conducive and protective environment that encourages healthy and safe behaviour.
The social and behavioural change initiatives are listed below.
Edutainment / Mass and Social media
Edutainment
A popular TV series, ‘Bakir’ focuses on a relatable Lebanese family struggling with many familiar hardships such as low employment opportunities, shortage of money and cultural pressure.
Viewers discover the human and societal drivers that lead to violence against boys, girls and women, child marriage, and child labour through each character.
The characters highlight the cultural diversity of the many different sectors of society living in Lebanon.
Puppet theatre has long been a firm favourite with children and their families.
A set of characters embodying QUDWA values has been developed with corresponding scripts and role-plays.
Discussion guidelines have been created for frontline workers and communities to utilise the puppet shows to initiate healthy and constructive dialogues around the topics of violence against girls, boys and women, child marriage and child labour.
Scripts on child marriage and child labour have been developed, alongside guidelines to create the puppets.
The engagement of Religious leader falls under the framework of UNICEF Lebanon's Qudwa Strategy and aims at expanding the pool of allies we work with to address the social norms that lead to harmful practices against children. Within their capacity as influential leaders in their communities, local Religious Leaders can strengthen our advocacy efforts on the ground with local communities, in addition to serving as channels of communication with a wider range of community members – especially those in remote areas and the most vulnerable.
Under this pilot intervention, UNICEF supported the establishment of a QUDWA network of religious leaders from all backgrounds. The Network will be supported to promote safer protective Environments for children among its constituents and peers.
The guidelines for community theatre (or forum theatre) are intended to train volunteers - not necessarily specialised in theatre or psychology - to start implementing activities with the aim that beneficiaries - through direct interaction and participation - will play a role in determining the course of events.
Forum theatre strengthens their capacities for dialogue and expression. It also allows them to be agents for social change. Forum theatre relies on a prepared script and the improvisation of audience members based on the script.
Three scripts were developed within the framework of QUDWA on child marriage, child labour and domestic violence.
A series of illustrated comic books have been developed to broaden the perception of what boys and girls can do and be.
The comic books engage children in contextualised storytelling and are designed to be relevant to Lebanon’s community dynamics and social norms.
Outdoor Cinema has been identified as an appropriate engaging activity to start a dialogue among community members around violence against children and women, child labour or child marriage and their drivers. The outdoor cinema is an opportunity for families and the community to come together for entertainment and leisure whilst also learning about the consequences of harmful practices. This activity allows you as an actor to touch base on sensitive topics while supporting the identification of grassroot and sustainable solutions for the protection of women and children from violence.
Social mobilization
Social Mobilization
A community public space is a safe space where boys and girls can go before or after school and at weekends.
Here, they can do their homework, play, sing, dance, engage in sports and learning activities, or simply interact with peers, receive care and support. It is also a space for adults and families to meet, exchange dialogue and release stress.
A partnership with beauty salons and barbershops has enabled the training and sensitisation of beauticians and barbers on positive parenting practices. Beauticians and barbers - most of them mothers and fathers or caregivers themselves - will serve as a conduit to transmit QUDWA tips and advice to women and men visiting their salons. Collateral materials will be available in the salons.
The following roadmaps will support actors aiming at addressing worst forms of child labour, to engage with male caregivers.
Community Engagement
QUDWA Caregivers Toolbox
An interactive toolbox for the education of parents on good parenting practice for use by practitioners in the field.
Community Engagement
These are short, shareable audio clips aimed at men. Each highlights positive caregiving techniques. These memes and audio clips adopt a catchy playful tone to attract the attention of men.
A human-sized model of a child made from textiles. It includes the option of representing either a boy or a girl.
Removable Velcro patches visually depict the seen and unseen effects of violence (verbal violence and psychological damage) on specific areas of the body, including the head, neck, back, face, arm, wrist, torso and leg. The removable patches show the body’s internal parts affected by hitting, pinching, slapping, squeezing, or shaking the body part.
A series of short (3-7-minute) videos that bring to life the magical and scientific wonder of the brain. Our knowledgeable neuron leads our protagonists on a (literally) mind-bending journey inside a child’s brain. Focusing on - but not limited to - the key developments from before birth until three years old and during adolescence, the animation brings the science behind the brain’s important development, function and fragility to life in a simple, clear and engaging way. The film also directly shows the impact of crucial brain development milestones on a child’s behaviour.
Brain development and violence (7 minutes): Watch this video on the child’s brain development; discover how they learn new skills and see the effect of violence and neglect on the process
Mother health and child brain development (4 minutes): this video focuses on the importance of a mother’s health during pregnancy and how it affects the child's brain development.
Early stimulation (4 minutes): Watch this video to learn more about early stimulation and how it helps a child acquire new competencies and skills and what is the impact of key brain development milestones on a child’s behaviour.
Brain development during adolescence (8 minutes): Watch this video on brain development during adolescence and learn more facts about this period of life, one where caregivers will be able to interact and communicate positively with their children.
A series of 24 flashcards depicting scenes are intended to spark discussion and reflection. The flashcards are designed to prompt conversations around child development, child labour, child marriage, healthy communication in families, supporting children and avoiding violent discipline.
- Version 1 (Child-protection focused):
To discuss subjects including child marriage, education and violent discipline. The scripts discuss key milestones in teenagers’ development and tricky challenges that caregivers may face while raising teenagers. In a shift of participants’ perspectives, some scripts require the teen and parent to reverse roles.
- Version2 (Cross-cutting):
The tool is a series of ten scripts to facilitate interactive dramas to inspire the discussion of subjects including child marriage, employment, safe working environments, participation, education and violent discipline. The scripts discuss key milestones in teenagers’ development and the tricky challenges caregivers may face when raising teenagers. Some of the scripts have the teen and parent reverse roles to shift participants’ perspectives.
This tool is a colouring book that focuses on parent-child play and development while utilising the benefits of practising mindfulness on stress levels and frustration - key factors contributing towards violence against women and children.
- Version 1 (CP focused):
This tool is a vertical timeline with twenty accompanying removable Velcro patches detailing life stages, key milestones and healthy development.
- Version 2 (cross-cutting)
This tool is a vertical timeline with three sets of ten patches detailing life stages, key milestones and healthy development in the following thematic areas: education, WASH, health and nutrition.
These are two different ring-bound sets of small flashcards (10 cards each) that caregivers or frontline workers can use with children:
- Emergency Play
- Life hacks
This digital trivia game targets child development issues and child rights in a fun and interactive way. There are various categories of questions aligned with sectoral areas of interest: WASH, Health and Nutrition, Youth, Disability, Child Protection and Education. The questions are designed to cover a range of children's ages and focus on the key behaviours and roles that caregivers play in supporting healthy development. The game is won by whoever gets to the end first.
This tool is a set of eight posters about key subjects, and they can be used and reused by frontline workers in their sessions with caregivers and children. In general, the posters have an infographic presentation style.
This tool is a child-safe playmat that depicts an image of a young child with various flaps revealing different body parts. This provides a safe area for caregivers to play with and inform their children and provides easy ways to interact with children to stimulate healthy growth and development. It also provokes discussions on the importance of keeping their bodies healthy.
The sticker book depicts key themes in the child development cycle, beginning with toddlers and ending with pre-teens.
This tool is an interactive journal with various activities and prompts to encourage adolescents and caregivers to engage in reflective dialogue to discuss goals, education and mental health. The journal is designed with adolescents in mind and contains activities and elements that are appropriate for caregivers to engage with their adolescent children.
This is the first episode of a drama series featuring a Lebanese family trying to make ends meet and raise their children. The episode depicts the everyday challenges that families and children encounter and is intended to spark reflection and dialogue around social norms and common caregiving behaviors that may or may not be healthy for Children.
This is a board game that targets child marriage in a fun and interactive way. The game is won by whoever reaches the finish line first. Along the way there are informational steps and discussions that help the players reflect upon issues that female adolescents may face such as: setting goals, getting an education, dangers of child pregnancy, challenges of raising a family, etc.
You can download the Board Game Cards - Focus Child Protection here.
This is a traditional deck of cards that has includes messages around child rights, positive caregiving and building healthy relationships with children. The deck of cards functions as any other deck and can be used for any card game. The cards are designed to subtly provide targeted key messages to caregivers, particularly male caregivers.
Capacity Building
Interpersonal Communications Training
Provision of interpersonal communications training to frontline workers (social workers, health workers, school psychologists, etc.) in order to further engagement with local communities. A dedicated training curriculum is also developed.
Implementation Guidelines
Implementation Guidelines
QUDWA is a strategy that aims at social behavioral change, a complex change requiring a set of multi-layered interventions to achieve. For social Behavioral change communication to serve well key child protection programmatic priorities, actors need to align their interventions to the general guidance below, thus applying the different strategies / tools QUDWA offers in an interlinked manner.
A unified communication approach for an altered narrative in favor of children and women: How we communicate about violence against children and women matters. Under the framework of the QUDWA strategy, UNICEF Lebanon utilizes positive communication &advocacy to enforce positive behaviors for children and women. Partners are requested to align their communication under the terms of the strategy based on the same messages and approach for impactful communication and advocacy community based campaigns.
Under the framework of the QUDWA strategy, our goal is to move from activities that are mostly focused on sensitization and awareness raising into community engagement, Edutainment and social mobilization for sustainable change. Partners can rely on this guidance sheet to assess whether the initiatives being implemented by their sub partners are based on the QUDWA approach and what is required to improve these for strengthened interventions targeting behavioral change.
Designing QUDWA interventions must be based on a deep dive into the context partners are working in. It also necessitates planning initiatives in an inter-liked manner, with a clear understanding of the drivers of harmful practices, the stakeholders/ individuals to be engaged, targeted and empowered for tangible change. You can rely on this as a sample to form a better understanding on how initiatives should be planned.