A special issue of The Journal of Development Communication, published online last month, focuses entirely on the 2018 Social and Behavior Change Communication Summit held in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, in April.
The Summit drew 1,200 practitioners and researchers from more than 90 countries to discuss what works in SBCC and to lay a framework for the field going forward.
The issue features 10 papers prepared by Summit participants based on their presentations in Nusa Dua, covering “a range of challenges from using storytelling to help fishermen in Belize deal with threats to their occupations, and influencing adolescent girls and boys in India to address gender discrimination and stereotyping – to the use of social media to change norms regarding babies’ health in Malawi.”
In the words of the editor, the issue “attempts to capture the excitement and dynamism of the Summit, while presenting some of the evidence and lessons learned in SBCC and E-E that were shared at the Summit.”
The papers offer valuable insights and lessons. The Summit-related materials demonstrate the importance of SBCC for addressing the challenges that appear in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and the role that communication should play as the global community works towards these goals between now and 2030.
“This special issue allows a much broader audience to benefit from some of the great work we saw highlighted at the Summit,” says Susan Krenn, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and head of the Secretariat that organized the five-day event. “And this captures just a small subset of the incredible richness of what was learned, debated and shared in Indonesia.”
The special issue also includes an interview Krenn, as well as a piece by Rafael Obregon of UNICEF and Warren Feek of The Communication Initiative on the launch of The Global Alliance for Social and Behavior Change, a mechanism for mobilizing SBCC for achieving development goals.
CCP, with support from other partners, is currently organizing the Francophone Social and Behavior Change Summit: Addressing Barriers in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and Nutrition, to be held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, from Feb. 25 to 27, 2019.
