By Uangbaoje Alex, Kaduna
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has trained her Kaduna Field Office staff and government partners, CSOs, media focal points, Academia, others on Social and Behavior Change (SBC) in line with global shift or expansion.
The training according to the Chief of SBC, UNICEF Nigeria Country Office, Kshitij Joshi, has become imperative following the transition in programming.
He emphasized the need for every sector to be innovative and look beyond awareness creation by focusing on integration and how programs will be scaled up for sustainability purposes.
Kshitij, who said this at a separate SBC Shift Orientation Workshop in Kaduna, explained that SBC is a process to achieve results.
“SBC has shifted from just talking about behavior change but now lays more emphasis on social change.
“Societies don’t change overnight, there has to be an adaptation. Change happens in a gradual process, just raising awareness doesn’t change behavior.” The Chief said.
He urged them to always try as much as possible to bring the UNICEF SBC Specialist to the table as a “third eye” whenever they are planning their programs.
“The messages you designed may not change people immediately, but it should be able to impact them, so you need to try and address issues around why services are not available before mobilizing them to access them.
“Always work to build on all the existing knowledge and structures to ensure there’s sustainability
“To move beyond SBC, there should be a shift in programming that reflects transformative changes and ownership”. Kshitij, added.
Flagging off the workshop, Representative of the Executive Secretary, Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board, Alh Hamza Ibrahim Ikara, Director, Disease Control and Immunization, of the board, urged the participants to pay attention and understand the new methods of communicating their programs to achieve social change.
According to him, it important that the knowledge they will acquire from the training is impacted to citizens to help them change their health seeking behavior.
He therefore thanked UNICEF for the collaborating with the State in organizing the training for participants in SBC space from Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger and Kaduna states.
Participants at the workshop who expressed readiness to push for the required change to help the society, noted that it will be important to know what have been done rightly and what needed to be done going forward.
They noted that what has happened in the past was compliance to campaigns and not change of behavior.
They observed that neglect of what they described as native intelligence has greatly impacted why people don’t adapt to changes despite the campaigns.
They also noted that the language of engagement must change in discussing SBC if anything meaningful will be achieved.
They suggested that a tool be developed to measure the behavior of people towards certain programs.
The training which started at UNICEF’s office for her staff, continued for another two days for partners that includes: government partners, CSOs, academia and the media.
Newsweb Express 