By: Edith Nantongo, East Africa Region Coordinator / Agency for All Project and
Aloysious Nnyombi, Eastern Africa Agency, Social and Gender Norms Learning Collaborative

Posted: Jun 2024

The social and behavior change (SBC) landscape is dynamic. Distinct framings of SBC programming, such as behavioral insights, human-centered design, and social change often originate from different paradigms and have profoundly influenced our understanding of SBC.

The past two decades have seen rapid advances in approaches to SBC and new opportunities for engaging people in social change. There has been a gradual shift from behavior change communication to social and behavior change communication, introducing a more ecological approach to change processes. Notably, in the past five years there has been even more change to SBC—a broader concept that recognizes communication as just one component of a comprehensive approach to SBC, which also includes systems strengthening, service improvements, and behavioral insights in sectors such as health, education, environment, gender, agriculture, and more.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in using social norms, agency, and gender as tools to facilitate change in individual and collective behavior in diverse contexts. Nevertheless, we have not yet achieved a common conceptual understanding of agency, social norms, and gender theory, and how they intersect.

About the course

To address this gap, Agency for All consortium partners Makerere University and the University of the Witwatersrand, in partnership with the African Society of Social and Behaviour Change (AS-SBC), designed an interactive course held in April in Kampala, Uganda. The course, created for mid-level to senior SBC practitioners in the Global South, explored how the concepts can be simplified and applied by practitioners to enrich their efforts and contribute to sustaining behavior change.

What we covered: Course learning objectives

Across all components of the course, we set out to:

1. Explain the relationship between agency, social norms, gender, and SBC, including theoretical considerations.
2. Critique different framings of SBC programming (e.g., behavioral insights, human-centred design, social change).
3. Apply skills to conduct a contextual analysis of social and gender norms, agency, behaviors, and their antecedents, including measurement considerations.
4. Design an evidence-based SBC strategy that includes social norms, gender, and agency, relevant to a specific context, including approach prioritization and selection.
5. Describe the principles of monitoring and evaluating SBC interventions, including social norms, gender, and agency.
6. Describe how to address power, culture, and ethical dilemmas within SBC.
7. Develop skills in working in multidisciplinary and cross-cultural teams.

Applying what we learned: Participants’ key takeaways

We were overwhelmed by the interest we received in this course. SBC practitioners and researchers from Eastern Africa, West Africa, and South Asia regions were enthusiastic to move beyond knowledge to locally defined and led action.

Agency for All consortium partners plan to refine the course and adapt it for different locations and languages, consider shortened versions or modularization, or blended or fully online formats. The partners are also exploring ways to ensure sustainability by registering the course within one or more training institutions.

At the end of the course, we listened to participants’ experiences, and how they intend to integrate what they learned into their work. Here are some of their reflections:

Q: What were your key takeaways from the course?

“Whereas I have integrated gender and social norms in my work before, I did not have a full understanding of these concepts. The course has brought about this clarity and enabled me to understand how elements such as agency, gender, and social norms can best be integrated into my research work, particularly in setting the right research questions. The theories and tools provided to us will greatly enrich my work.”
– Analyst, Busara, Kenya

“Agency and social norms, and of course gender [are] very critical to how we implement SBC programming and have been in most cases understated and not investigated so much, yet they are paramount and can create the change that we want and enable the sustenance of the behaviors that we want to advance.”
– Knowledge Management Associate, WI-HER

“Every time one thinks about the SBC programs, one should consider gender, agency, and social norms. If individuals are to change, then you must look into their capacity to make decisions about their lives; plus, do they have resources that can facilitate the change, which speaks to the importance of the socio-ecological model.”
– Senior Lecturer, Makerere University

“I have more than 11 years’ experience in social and behavior change programming. This was the first opportunity for me to learn about agency; I was able to internalize the intersection between social norms, agency, and gender and how they relate to social, and behavior change programming.”
– Regional Coordinator, West Africa, Agency for All

“It was very relevant for me that this training delved into some specific constructs that we are grappling with to define what agency, social norms, and gender norms are, and how we can approach those constructs from the lens of measurement. Sessions on behavioral insights and measurement of norms was something that that was helpful for me.”
– Senior Research Manager, Sambodhi

I was happy to grow my network with many new people coming from different organizations and countries. This was a great platform to connect and share our programming experiences. I found that my experience in social change provided useful insights for the group’s discussions, and I, too, gained from the elaborate sharing on social norms, agency, gender, and social and behavior change.”
– Country Lead, Twaweza, East Africa

Q: How are you going to apply or integrate this key learning into your work?

“We are a gender leader and partner on many projects. But I have realized that we need to do more. We must apply the concepts that we have looked at here, issues of agency and social norms. What I have seen is all SBC frames are important, none can be left out. You can choose to do SBC, but when you need something that needs to be addressed in a short time, you can bring in principles of risk communication or emergency communication. I am also going to invite members of the African Society for Social Behaviour Change to think through the concepts of agency and intersectionality and conclude on how these can lead to better development outcomes.”
– Knowledge Management Associate, WI-HER

“As an academic and researcher, every time I speak to my students and organizations where I provide technical support, issues of agency and social norms will come in strongly—especially if the topic is about SBC.”
– Senior Lecturer, Makerere University

“There has been a knowledge gap among our West African Social Norms and Agency Learning Collaborative members. I’m going to develop an orientation guide for members to understand the nexus among the concepts of agency, gender, and social norms and their role in SBC programming.”
– Regional Coordinator, West Africa — USAID Agency for All

“They shared with us several resources, including those on measurement. These are resources that I will use in my work back home. And the last session, for instance, on norms measurement is something we have already started doing and I would keep on doing.”
– Senior Research Manager, Sambodhi

“The course came at the time when we were finalizing our new program strategy and the perspectives on social norms have enabled us to refine our outcome indicators, particularly on dignity and social norms. We have also asked the team at Makerere to allow students to make use of our large data sets in their research projects and this is an area we shall continue to follow up.”
– Country Lead, Twaweza, East Africa

Watch other reflections from participants in April’s course in Kampala and stay tuned for more about our India course adaptation in July 2024.

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