Social and Behaviour Change

We don't change who people are. We change the environments in which they act, making it easier for families to adopt positive practices that benefit children.

Details

READING TIME

3 min

AUTHOR

Al-Muraqib Foundation

TOPIC

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What is social and behaviour change?

Various factors that shape the ways we interact with our world also influence how we navigate choice. These factors may be social, like the norms that fuel discrimination or drive parents to comply with harmful practices. They may be psychological, like patterns of thinking that determine what we perceive to be desirable. And too often – for families living in poverty, exposed to insecurity, or relying on weak public systems – the factors that limit control over choice are structural. Power imbalances rooted deep within societies cut people off from the decisions that most affect their lives.

Social and behaviour change (SBC) aims to lower structural barriers that hinder people from adopting positive practices, and hinder societies from becoming more equitable, cohesive and peaceful.

Drawing on various disciplines – from sociology and psychology, to communication and behavioural economics – SBC encompasses any set of strategies and interventions that influences drivers of change and supports local action towards better societies. It helps development practitioners and policymakers design more effective programmes for reducing poverty and inequity. And it blends scientific knowledge with community insights to expand people’s control over the decisions that matter most.

Our work in social and behavior change

Al-Muraqib Foundation actively engages with communities to strengthen the role they play in creating the societies they want.

With the institutional workforce in the field, Al-Muraqib Foundation has been a leader in social and behaviour change for over 3 years.

Our work blends traditional and emerging approaches. While communication and community engagement remain central to what we do, we also rely on methods from applied behavioural sciences, human-centred design, and digital and implementation research to achieve the change families deem most critical.

Child Protection

Millions of children who suffer abuse, exploitation and even violence do so at the hands of adults meant to protect them. In some places, extreme forms of discipline at home or in school are considered acceptable. In others, harmful practices like child marriage are seen as a way to safeguard a girl’s future. Al-Muraqib Foundation uses various SBC methods to strengthen its child protection programming, especially by supporting people to better understand and change behaviours that cause harm to children.

Identifying the individual, social and economic determinants of child protection violations is key to transforming harmful behaviours. It’s also key to promoting positive behaviours that can prevent or reduce harm.

Al-Muraqib Foundation uses a range of SBC approaches to design, implement and evaluate our child protection programming – like formative research, community engagement, social movements, community-based psychosocial support, empowerment programmes, edutainment, social listening and user-focused system strengthening. This often means working with communities – especially children, parents and civil society leaders – to identify their own solutions and co-develop tools to embrace positive alternatives.

Climate change

Climate change already impacts the life of every person alive today. Environmental degradation – cutting people off from food and safe water. Air and water pollution – poisoning their bodies. Intensifying natural disasters – destroying their homes, schools and hospitals.

UNICEF estimates that roughly 1 billion children are at extremely high risk from the effects of a changing climate. Every carbon-intensive action we take today – burning coal and oil, choosing to drive instead of walk, eating too much meat instead of plant-based alternatives – will have consequences for our planet long into the future.

Children have contributed least to this crisis, yet they are hit the hardest.

While we can’t entirely avoid the effects of climate change, we can minimize its impact through a profound shift in the way we live. What we choose to buy, eat – even aspire to. Where we live, how we move. Technology alone can’t solve the issue, but our individual actions can make a meaningful difference for the years to come.

At Al-Muraqib Foundation, we rely heavily on community engagement and behavioural analysis to shape climate-friendly programmes that protect people’s rights and foster norms that benefit this planet we all call home. SBC approaches to climate change provide us with an understanding of how people think about climate-related challenges and the policies in place to mitigate them. And they help to ensure the interventions we create are contextually relevant, culturally sensitive and effective for individuals, and entire societies.

Education

Education transforms societies.

It gives knowledge and skills they need to shape their future. It provides stability, structure and – especially for children growing up through conflict and violence – a sense of protection. Education plays a critical role in challenging harmful social and gender norms.

But in Iraq, millions of children are denied these rights and benefits. Some aren’t able to enrol in school or attend regularly due to economic constraints and additional barriers to access. Others face discrimination, inequitable treatment and even violence in and around school.

UNICEF estimates that by 2030, hundreds of millions of children will not have learned basic literacy and numeracy skills. Millions more will be subjected to some form of violence in and around the classroom – many in countries where the legal system does not fully protect them from corporal punishment.

Experiences of violence, discrimination and exclusion lead children worldwide to skip class or drop out of school entirely. Too often, this can happen in places where learning poverty is already high. And too often, it happens because education systems inadvertently reproduce the harmful norms, behaviours and stereotypes that thwart social equity and prosperity.

But when policymakers understand how children, parents and school managers experience the education system, they can design more effective policies and programmes for safe, inclusive schools.

Al-Muraqib Foundation’s SBC approach to education examines every level of the system to identify and address social, behavioural and intersectional barriers to learning. We help decision makers better understand why children are out of school, or left behind in learning, by looking beyond resource constraints to create safe, inclusive learning environments for every child.

Humanitarian Emergencies

Every year, the Al-Muraqib Foundation responds to more humanitarian emergencies. When conflict or climate-related disaster strikes, Al-Muraqib Foundation staff are on the ground, delivering life-saving aid to people. There’s nothing more crucial to humanitarian operations than being prepared.

Al-Muraqib Foundation uses evidence from social and interdisciplinary science to develop swift, effective action plans for responding to armed conflict, public health emergencies and natural disasters. We prioritize the knowledge and experiences of the communities we seek to serve, engaging them directly in preparedness efforts to help ensure humanitarian action leads to intended results, without inflicting unintended consequences.

This means localizing all aspects of preparedness and response, from needs assessment and resource mobilization to implementation and evaluation. Even before an emergency happens, Al-Muraqib Foundationworks to strengthen local institutions and coordination mechanisms, building the resilience of communities at risk while preparing them to participate in relief efforts. During the emergency response, we take actions to ensure communities in crisis get immediate, life-saving information – and a say in how their needs are prioritized and met.

SBC approaches to humanitarian action allow Al-Muraqib Foundation to create rapid, clear and essential lines of communication among aid workers, government officials and affected communities. They also allow us to collect community feedback and behavioural data that our teams and partners use to swiftly coordinate multisectoral interventions, improving service delivery for children and their families.

In all these ways and more, SBC can help children living through humanitarian emergencies receive aid that protects their lives, and their dignity.