Development Calling - The Options - Specific Problems on Which to Focus (draft)

Problem Option 1: Programming standards

Problem to solve: The lack of agreed-upon standards for communication and media (and/for) development, and social and behaviour change programme initiatives.

Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years, 500 organisations and relevant government units commit to a common set of quality standards for those elements of their work.

➢    Within 5 years, 250 organisations and relevant government units have received an external assessment of the quality of their work gauged against the agreed-upon quality standards.

Yes, the International Social Marketing Association (ISMA) and its member associations around the world agrees in principle to developing a common set of quality standards and are willing to participate in this effort. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    We may not want to talk about them as “programming standards.” By doing so, we could be restricting ourselves to focus on programs only, potentially excluding communication initiatives focused on creating policy, systems, and environmental change.

•    Social marketing has a set of ‘benchmarks’ that are applied to the design and presentation of various activities. These include a focus on behavioural objectives, having a customer orientation, use of behavioural and social change theory to inform the activity, research to discover customer insights, consideration of competition to adopting and maintaining new behaviours, segmentation and tailoring, use of a marketing mix (or a mix of methods), considering costs and benefits to adopting and maintaining new behaviours, having monitoring system in place for the activities, and evaluation research. We suggest these as discussion starters.

•    Consider the following three resources that have already been developed or in development as the basis for these proposed standards:

o    The consensus principles paper developed by the member associations of the ISMA.

o    The Assess, Do, and Describe (ADD) Framework developed by the WISH Communicating Complex Health Messages Forum 2015
o    The National Occupational Standards developed by UK-based National Social Marketing Centre (NSMC) in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the British Standards Institute.

•    Ensure that development space is large enough to meet the target numbers recommended in the draft Goals.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):
a.    Bring together a working group to develop the standards criteria.
b.    Broker a negotiation process to come to an agreement and ensure wide consensus across this field of work related to the standards criteria developed.
c.    Train people in the application of the standards.
d.    Undertake an overall audit of the quality standards across a cross-section of the action focused on communication and media (and/for) development and social and behaviour change programmes.
e.    Provide guidance for communities and peoples being engaged, boards and other decision-making forums, funders, technical experts, external and internal evaluators, media, etc. to assess the quality of the work with which they are involved.

The ISMA supports (a) bringing together a working group and will put forward names from our member associations to. As we have recommended above, we support (d) undertaking an audit of existing quality standards, and recommend that these existing standards should inform the development of the quality standards proposed here. The member associations of the ISMA will support (e) providing guidance for communities and peoples being engaged.

Problem Option 2: Training standards

Problem to solve: Anyone can be a communication, media, social and behaviour change practitioner in the development context.
Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years of the training standards being proposed, 200 training institutions (across the spectrum from short-course to post-graduate) have committed to work towards those standards, with appropriate national and local variations.

➢    At the conclusion of a 5-year period, 50% of a sample of people working in relevant roles have passed a course recognised as meeting training standards for this field of work.

iSMA supports these goals. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Revise the Problem to Solve to read: “Anyone can be a communication, media, social and behaviour change practitioner in the development context with effective training and support.”

•    Tie this work to an exemplar such as the US-lead Healthy People 2020 objectives to increase social marketing education and training within public health schools and programs.

•    Our work in promoting standards for programs that teach social marketing uncovered the resistance of university professors to have their curricula ‘dictated’ to them and pride themselves on developing courses that they believe are useful for their students. We pursued an approach to academic competencies that are guidance for instructors of academic courses and designers of academic and non-academic certificate programs in social marketing.

•    Build on the work begun by the ISMA to develop a comprehensive directory of courses and supervision in social marketing programs. For example, the Australian Association of Social Marketing (AASM) has developed a Social Marketing Masterclass programme offering training in social marketing based on core principles and good practice which may soon receive accreditation from the Australian Marketing Institute and the Australian Government.

•    The member associations of the ISMA can help coordinate access to and delivery of such training programmes. We would also consider providing the certification.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):

a.    Work with a group of people undertaking trust, equity, engagement, gender, voice, and/or accountability or people and change programmes, strategies, and learning to develop a set of training standards.

b.    Broker a negotiation process with the wide range of institutions providing training to agree to a proposed set of standards.

c.    Undertake an overall audit of the training standards in a sample of the institutions providing such training.

d.    Provide guidance and support to training institutions in order that they can engage in quality standards review of their own training initiatives.

iSMA will support this roll out and audit activity. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Because these proposed strategies could prove onerous for those institutions already subjected to one or more accreditation processes (e.g., Schools and Programs of Public Health), we recommend that these standards be developed in consultation with stakeholders and institutions already delivering training and training certifications. The WHO Global standards for the initial education of professional nurses and midwives could serve as one model in this area.

•    We recommend providing the guidance and support to training institutions, so they can engage in their own quality standards review. This approach seems more manageable from a resource perspective as the onus falls on training institutions rather than the professional association. Currently, ISMA and our affiliate associations do not have the capacity and resources to conduct these audits, so we believe that the key will be providing incentive for training institutions to perform the audits and reviews of their training.

Problem Option 3: Policy voice

Problem to solve: At the global level, it has been difficult for the communication for development, media (and/for) development, and social and behaviour change community to find a common and prominent voice that can influence local, national, regional, and global policies.

Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years, there is a 50% rise in both: our perspectives and ideas being included in major policy documents; and our people being at the table for those policymaking processes.

➢    At the conclusion of a 5-year period, it is possible to assess that our perspectives have had a major influence on important international development strategy development.

iSMA supports these goals. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    In order to achieve the united voice considered in the problem statement above, we recommend using a common voice and vocabulary to influence—and change—local, national, regional, and global policies. As a practice, social marketing and social marketers use the strategies under discussion—communication, media, and behavioural and social change strategies—to achieve behaviour, social, and, increasingly, policy change.

•    Consider putting emphasis on measuring positive policy response not just policy change in general, some which may be neutral or negative.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):

e.    Developing and publishing a major annual critique of development (or a particular aspect of development) from a communication and media (and/for) development and social and behaviour change perspective and analysis.

f.    Undertaking a coordination process (using established and ongoing networks, for example) to agree on the spokesperson(s) for this field of work on a particular issue.

g.    Forming and supporting interest groups (small groups of interested people and organisations) to pursue particular policy areas – for example, a group to focus on any reviews of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change should this be a priority policy concern.

h.    Designing a common branding process for the policy engagement work that would take place. As an example, when UNICEF released several years ago its “Structural Adjustment with a Human Face” paper, the “human face” became common branding for a number of policy processes that critiqued different elements of development. That phrase resonated, and resonance is a tricky communication “thing”. But the principle remains.

The iSMA supports these strategies. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

i.    Consider an annual review of progress report.

j.    Consider differentiating communication and media from more holistic behaviour change strategies like social marketing.

k.    Consider media and promotions training for the spokespeople (b) and briefing for them so they present a unified message.

l.    Consider developing code or guide to good practice that can inform practitioners, commissioners, and researchers.

m.    For US-based organizations, be aware that there are rules governing our ability to engage in lobbying/advocacy within the US.

Problem Option 4: Credible and compelling evidence

Problem to solve: “Prove that you have impact.”

Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years, to have general consensus across this field of work on the 30 most compelling and credible pieces of impact data.

➢    At the conclusion of a 5-year period, to be able to cite 100 instances of at least one of those pieces of data being included in local, national, regional, or international development policy and strategy papers.

The iSMA supports these goals. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Pursue having a single access point to or portal for sources of evaluation data, case study material and systematic and meta-analytic reviews. Recommend reviewing existing databases and similar portals before beginning development to inform any future portal development.

•    Many systematic and meta-analytic reviews of various topic areas in communication, marketing and media for health are already available. These reviews should be a priority to capture, synthesize and serve as a foundation for future actions.

•    Consider the entire hierarchy of evidence (e.g., case studies, RCTs, systematic reviews, etc.) when deciding what should be considered credible and compelling evidence.

•    Because it may be challenging to agree on how impact is measured across different approaches and in different contexts, consider setting up a working group that is charged with develop a consensus on collating credible and compelling evidence.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):

a.    For each element of, for example, people and change, trust, equity, engagement, gender, voice, and accountability, identify the main credible and substantive research “pieces” with significant impact outcomes – positive or negative.

b.    Develop packages of that research and evaluation data relative to specific groups, organisations, communities of interest, and other development actors to engage with around the agreed-upon data. For example, there may be one package for local communities in order that conversations can take place concerning the demonstrated value of this work. Moving across the spectrum, another package could be for the 50 largest funders of development action in order to facilitate conversations with that important group of stakeholders. The same could apply for others – governments, bilaterals, technical experts in other fields, leaders of community and social movements, UN agencies, etc. Each would need a tailored product.

The iSMA supports these strategies. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Develop a common portal of guidelines and evidence for behaviour and social change programs. Prior to establishing the portal, review existing portals for accessing case studies of social marketing approaches that have worked (e.g., Tools of Change).

•    Consider funding comprehensive meta-reviews of existing research and evaluation data to inform good practice.

Problem Option 5: Funding levels

Problem to solve: Raise the substantial additional funds required for this field of work

Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years, engage 50 major global funders in order to highlight the analysis, strategy, track record, impact, future plans, and added value of your field of work.

➢    Within 5 years, see a 50% increase in funding from the 30 largest global funders.

➢     Ensure that 50% of these funds flow directly to Southern initiated, developed, and fully managed organisations.

The iSMA supports these goals. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Clarify “Southern initiated, developed, and fully managed organizations” to ensure that developing countries within North and Central America are not disadvantaged.

•    Ensure investments from these funds flow to both practice evaluations and the theory development.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):

a.    Form a formal alliance of major Northern and Southern agencies to guide the work of a secretariat.

b.    Create a common “bucket” into which funders can place funds. This could be based on a mechanism such as GAVI.

c.    Develop a set of criteria for the allocation of those funds and manage that mechanism.

The iSMA supports these strategies.

Problem Option 6: Civil society engagement

Problem to Solve: From the perspective of the major development organisations, the overall development process has struggled to incorporate civil society organisations and perspectives in its consultation and decision-making processes.

Goals: This could lead to the following goals:

➢    Within 2 years, to create 3 spaces at the highest levels in the UN system and in 5 national settings to systematically listen to community voices and perspectives.

➢    Within 5 years, to be able to demonstrate 20 examples of the significant contribution of communication, media, social and behaviour change civil society processes to regional and global decision-making.

The iSMA supports these goals. We have several recommendations on how to proceed:

•    Carefully consider which strategies to choose so we do not overpromise and under deliver as has been done many times before with development work.

•    While we recognize that high-level support for civil society engagement is important, consider also including outreach programs that involve engaging, consulting and working with communities on the ground.

•    When identifying the 20 examples, focus on how they achieve behavioural and policy outcomes, resource efficiencies, reducing inequities, improving sustainability of outcomes, their potential for scalability, as well as their short term impact and longer-term outcomes - not just on process measures or narratives.

Strategies: Some possible strategies to reach those goals could include (these are exemplary only at this stage):

a.    Monitoring and noting the major decision-making process that will take place – coming up, for example, are likely reviews of progress against the SDGs, World Bank reviews of poverty strategies, assessments of HIV/AIDS progress, and many more.

b.    Identifying Southern organisations and networks (and specific people within) who are interested and available to provide input into regional and global development decision-making forums.

c.    Providing them with relevant briefings and documents related to future regional and global decision-making events.

d.    Brokering access and engagement for relevant Southern organisations and networks into the decision-making and review processes.

e.    Developing and publishing a series of policy documents highlighting Southern communication, media, social and behavioural change perspectives, analyses, and ideas on selected priority issues, for example related to poverty, gender, HIV/AIDS, child mortality, or the environment.   

The iSMA supports these strategies. We also recommend that we explore ways to enable the widest range of organisations and voices to participate, including bringing the perspective of communities to the decision-making forums through engagement and consultation with these communities prior to the forums.

4)      There is mention of no training standards and no formal courses that get people ready to be communication, social, behavioral change agents. Is that perhaps because anyone who takes social psych, behavior analysis, or media courses already think they know this kind of work and think about how to effect change? And would they be wrong in thinking that they have a sense of how to do this? What about all of the books on habits, persuasion, nudges, etc…..are those not highlighting the very behaviors you are trying to influence as well? Is it less about defining this work as vastly different from what people think they are doing and more about having a place for all good insights to get an audience? The whole field of behavioral economics is in the spotlight at the moment but it seems to me that a lot of what those best practices are were things I learned about in the 1990s in graduate school about sustainable programs. To me if feels like a rebranding of an old concept.

 
5)      What can you learn from the for-profit/business world about how they implement behavior change and how they convince clients to buy products, adopt behavior, etc?

 
6)      Problem 4: Compelling evidence—compelling that a particular method of behavior change works? Or that a systematic approach to behavior change works? It’s unclear what evidence is needed here…

 
7)      Problem 6: This is about including voices…which seems to be a different voice than the behavior change field issue. Both seem to be important but this is a different issue altogether (unless I’m missing something entirely which is possible)

C4D Network Response Part A: ‘Which specific priority worries and issues need to be addressed in order for this field of work to become more effective at greater scale.’

Regarding what are the main issues that need to be addressed in order to be more effective in all our C4D work we would echo many of the findings of the research put forward in this options paper.

These also echo many of the findings we also have found during our recent 50-country C4D mapping study, in which C4D practitioners in-country meet and discussed what is key for them I their work, and what is happening on the ground with C4D in their countries.  (http://www.comminit.com/global/content/c4d-network-country-mapping-study...)

Issue: C4D profile

The issue of C4D as an area of practice being under-recognised within the development sector is the key one and the one from which most other challenges flow. The Options Paper notes that the problem to solve is ‘the lack of agreed-upon standards for communication and media (and/for) development, and social and behaviour change programme initiatives.’

We would agree.

We would go further and say that it is not just agreed standard (we imagine this is meaning standards about how to research, plan, implement and evaluate C4D); it is also primarily about a lack of share understanding and agreed presentation of this field to others – and amongst ourselves as practitioners and theorists.

This lack of a ‘shared language’ as noted in the Paper we agree is the main issue and we echo the finding that this ‘undermines’ the understanding and appreciation of the ‘added value’ of C4D in development.  A key finding in our C4D Mapping study was that practitioners felt their work was often misunderstood, invisible and under-appreciated. [Mapping Finding: C4D is often invisible and unnamed, but it is present ‘on the ground’.]

Therefore, we would fully support a sector wide effort to better communicate what C4D is in order to raise its profile and engaged our other development colleagues more effectively.

Issue: Training standards

The Options paper identifies a key problem to solve being that ‘Anyone can be a communication, media, social and behaviour change practitioner in the development context.’

We agree that there is a certain free for all in this area, but also we know from the community of practitioners that there are many well-trained people coming from different disciplines, ours is a multi-disciplinary area after all.

We also note that there is a great increase in the number of masters courses, and now some undergraduate and short/vocational course in different aspects of C4D, this is to be celebrated. But indeed ‘training standards’ or a common base of core curriculum is a perennial issue, and one we – like other groups – are very much focused on addressing.

But is this about training standards completely though? Or more about the whole package of C4D being under-recognised within the development sector (and this due to our own collective inability thus far to communicate what C4D is – its aim, principles and modalities).

Issue: Credible and compelling evidence

The Options paper identifies a key problem to solve being proving C4D impact. We agree that this is clearly a perennial issue and relates like all the issues to C4D profile. We agree this is a key issue. The solutions however are not necessarily a ‘One C4D’ solution, but better coordination and signposting about where evidence is gathered, and better synthesis of this evidence. (Like DFID Systematic Reviews of Evidence out of the Research and Evidence Division).

There are two separate issues here, firstly ‘lack of impact data’ and secondly ‘poor C4D research methodologies and knowledge of methods’. These should be addressed separately.

·       Lack of impact data: could be supported by more targeted collaborative research (and indeed a central funding basket for this would be useful).

·       Poor C4D research know-how: could be addressed by improved C4D capacity development, and the support and structures that are needed to make sure C4D practitioners have the greatest access to training and resources in an on-going way. There are many resources, but most C4D people do not know about them, because there are weaknesses in prioritising their needs.

Issue: Policy voice

The Options paper identifies a key problem to solve being the lack of a ‘common and prominent voice that can influence local, national, regional, and global policies’. We wholeheartedly agree.

We would just caution however against a North American / EU – led ‘solution’, that is not the voice that is needed; there needs to be better ways for our voices to be articulated around our varied C4D practice – and that includes practitioners such as community radio people, community mobilisers, youth bloggers, activists of varies types; not just the ‘usual suspect’ INGOs and UN agencies.

If the issue is about lobbying for C4D to policy actors (and we agree that is vital) then there needs to be caution about western appropriation of that lobby voice in a way that has characterised the sector (and all of development?) for too many years already. We need to be living the participatory principle of C4D, as it were, in our own actions.

Issue: Civil society engagement

The Options Paper identifies a problem to be solved as the ‘incorporation of civil society orgs and perspectives’ in major dev organisation’s consultation and decision-making processes.

We agree. But on the whole, believe that engagement in-country between C4D people and others is the way to promote civil society engagement from grassroots up, it is not necessarily something that requires a Western-based centralist solution.

Our Mapping Study found that C4D practitioners had very varied experiences regarding engagement by civil society as well as other actors such as government and donors in their countries. There is clearly variable knowledge about C4D which translates into variable levels of engagement and support. Again, this boils down to C4D profile, or lack of it in-country.

Thank you. We welcome the forthcoming discussions and look forward to working together as a community in addressing these issues for the betterment of the C4D field.

Problem options:

It is important to add a ‘localization’ lens to all options, from ensuring we have training institutions in developing countries to help support local actors, empower local organizations to gather the evidence needed for local action, beside data for global advocacy, to funding options that ensure local actors can sustain effective C4D/community engagement actions and scale it up in case of crisis.

 
In particular:

 
·         Option 1: while standards could help quality assure communication and community engagement approaches, we would not recommend ‘audit’ approaches which are already creating an unnecessary burden on local organizations having to perform multiple audits linked to humanitarian standards and donors/partners specific standards.

·         Options 6 refers to CSO or civil society in general? The goal and strategy is mixing ‘listen to community voices’ with engaging southern CSOs.  We might want to split the two and ensure we have adequate focus on local organizations support and engagement on one side and ‘listening and amplifying people’s voices’ on the other, which is a key component of the IFRC community engagement approach.

There is an added issue here of whether to separate out C4D for impact analysis – C4D rarely works as a separate thing, it’s most usefully thought of as a part of a health initiative, or nutrition initiative etc etc. Understanding the importance of its contribution is what we might more usefully focus on, and we’ve made a lot of progress on how we demonstrate that – and now have a resource hub that tackles this head on (we’ll be able to share this within 2-3 months – beta version can be shared now).

Scale – a focus on ‘scaling up’ is very damaging to this field and smacks of outdated ideas about development, ignoring all the work that demonstrates the importance of context, participation, complexity, and specific approaches and solutions.

In my opinion the first “problem” addressed in the paper, “programming standards,” is by far the most crucial to tackle, and the others cannot be adequately addressed or strategized until the first is nailed down. The fact that many policymakers don’t really know what this field IS, or how to explain it in understandable language, is going to cripple any efforts to become more influential in the development realm. Those of us working in “this field” even struggle to define it, which is the start of our problems.

On Problem option 5: Funding levels. I’m not sure this ought to be framed as a separate “problem” since it is (at least in large part) caused by the other problems listed before it. It seems like the best strategy for addressing funding problems would be to focus on the other more fundamental problems in our field.

Likewise, I’m not sure Problem Option 6 (“Civil Society Engagement”) should be framed as a separate problem either, since it’s a problem for the development field as a whole, not specifically for our field. In fact, as indicated in the document, it’s more of an opportunity for our field than a problem. It represents an opportunity for our field to gain more visibility. Highlighting our field’s ability to engage civil society could be incorporated into strategies to achieve the other goals in the document, rather than separated out as a separate problem.

Options:

Programming standards: Although there is lack of agreed upon standards; we need to think about models that work and can be documented for replication by partners

Training standards: An important aspect to be considered is the establishment of a "community of practice" that will continue to deliberate on standards and advise partners and actors.

Policy voice: There is so much that has been done around C4D; advocacy has emerged as an important area in development work. How do we link C4D with Advocacy?

Funding levels: This has remained a major challenge. In some cases; there is preference for "hardware" programming and not "software" i.e  SBCC work

a.    Bring together a working group to develop the standards criteria

CORE: Or review existing standards

e.    Provide guidance for communities and peoples being engaged

CORE: Ensure the working group has communities present

➢    At the conclusion of a 5-year period, 50% of a sample of people working in relevant roles have passed a course recognised as meeting training standards for this field of work

CORE: Need to define this a bit more- are there certain roles that are more appropriate than others?

c.    Undertake an overall audit of the training standards in a sample of the institutions providing such training.

CORE: Need to define this a bit more- are there certain roles that are more appropriate than others?

c.    Undertake an overall audit of the training standards in a sample of the institutions providing such training

CORE: Important !!! yes!! This can be done for the standards section also.

b.    Undertaking a coordination process (using established and ongoing networks, for example) to agree on the spokesperson(s) for this field of work on a particular issue.

CORE: The partnership “discussion” as a strategy has not been included in this document- for example- the secretariat model for Polio Eradication, was an effective coordination/collaboration mechanism; what other partners need to be involved- lawyers ( for the policy element); private companies ( for branding and marketing)- just as examples

c.    Forming and supporting interest groups (small groups of interested people and organisations) to pursue particular policy areas –

CORE: I think this is a great idea and helps streamline interests and expertise, to ultimately focus on the policy.

Problem Option 5: Funding levels

CORE: I would suggest listing the Problem options, in order of priorities from the consultation, then expanding on the other problem options

resonate strongly with those contexts.

CORE: Does the Funding issue tie in to capacity of Southern organizations to manage funds, financial  and reporting skills, etc? Does the “funding problem” need to be unpacked and broken down into the key areas of the funding problem? The next paragraph outlines the grant mechanisms, but not the other issues.

➢    Within 5 years, see a 50% increase in funding from the 30 largest global funders

CORE: If the issue is large grants- then, does there need to be a small grants program for CBOs that addresses capacity building in financial management, as well as the SBC activities they will undertake?

a.    Form a formal alliance of major Northern and Southern agencies to guide the work of a secretariat

CORE: I would like to see how you define this and then, how do we include the “non-major” agencies in the dialogue?

b.    Create a common “bucket” into which funders can place funds. This could be based on a mechanism such as GAVI.

CORE: My suggestion is that the every large Fund, should have a “SBC Bucket”

Three of the top 6 opportunities identified were: Rising importance of the voices of the people with whom you work; Growing levels of engagement by the people with whom you work; and Proliferation of citizens’ voices.

CORE: This is one of the largest problems- CSO engagement in a meaningful and country-driven manner

The UN Forum on Indigenous Issues and its equivalent on People with Disabilities

CORE: Yes- Disabilities made it finally!!

The Options section: all valid goals, perhaps ambitious, but doable. A Health Promotion principles and competencies might be considered here to complement the proposed goals.

Section K – the options

I am rather torn on the description of problems (particularly problem 2) and potential solutions. On the one hand, it makes sense to talk about standards and training and so forth. But what I also see in my field is the potential for this to further “silo” this work.  In the governance and peacebuilding world, we have very few people who are able to understand and work confidently in this area and a sense that it is something different and should be left for others, instead of a broad understanding that it is fundamental to how political processes (defined broadly) operate. I think we need to think about how “literacy” (if not specialism) in this field becomes a core competence, which we do not shy away from (in the way, for example that most of us are not specialists in electoral systems, but we do understand the basic landscape).

I don’t have a solution….but thought I would put this aspect of the problem on the table!

On problems, you have captured the important ones for the most part; some caveats:

·      We need to recognize that while the set of problems identified in the document are certainly relevant to our field and solving them will benefit our own C4D/CFSBC work, they are also framed (and thus limited) by our need to gain visibility and funding.

·      It appears that like many other fields of communication practice that do not have entry requirements, we are trying to “professionalize”, to standardize/routinize C4D/CFSBC practice. A good thing overall I think as long as we do not go into strict boundary maintenance. Is it possible to emphasize launching university level programs (at least at the master’s level), many of them, across the world, in your solutions? There are too few of them right now. I would also seriously consider an academic journal.

·      As for compelling impact data, there are two issues to consider.

o   One, change takes time, a very long time sometimes, and funding agencies need to be made to understand this. If we just take individual behavior change campaigns into consideration, not even corporate communications such as advertising and PR, with vastly more funds than C4D/CFSBC can dream of at this point for any one intervention, have limited impact. Corporations are happy with a very, very small percentage day-after-aided-recall, and they acknowledge that they do not know which 50 cents of their dollar they spent actually created the impact. Participatory social change would be even more complex in terms of time.

o   Two, we need to define success in a multitude of ways and make those ways acceptable to funders rather than be driven by a narrow evidence set that is ethnocentric and straightjacketing.

On solutions, the timeframe may be somewhat overambitious unless you are able to garner a lot of resources to make them happen quickly, and naturally success in the allotted time is to some extent dependent on the mechanism that is finally selected. More specifically, solutions that focus on organizations (I am assuming these are international and national) and governments may reproduce the modernization paradigm; these also work against getting civil society engagement.

Question 1: Which specific priority worries and issues need to be addressed in order for this field of work to become more effective at greater scale?

Before going into our answer, let me just share that we did start the discussion around the question itself. If we strive to be more effective at greater scale, we most likely mean having more impact, longer-lasting impact, impacting more beneficiaries of our work. What we are missing in this articulation of a goal is the process of our work. Following C4D's core principles. We will certainly address the principles across the outlined Problem Options, however we do miss the foundational role of our principles in the paper overall. 

We do agree on the necessity of standards. The focus of such standards, again, should be on the processes that need to be in place for good C4D, for global and national work. For us, it is more important finding the minimum specifications of good C4D design, implementation, and evaluation, based on our principles, than it is to spend resources in order to agree on how we name ourselves. We would situate the ability to create a good theory of change within the programming standards. Being able to create a strong Theory of Change is important for every successful communication program, but it is also a chance for C4D to visualize how C4D can bridge between thematic areas, helping to break down silos and leverage program resources.

Trainings are important, but we will need to make them accessible and practitioner-friendly across the world. More relevant than having institutions offering specific C4D courses, that might be expensive and hard to attend, is to create a fostering environment that allows us to share lessons learned, be not afraid talking about failures or questions, focus on program design and not only outcome.

Overall, we are communicators and sometimes that is not obvious. We use language that is not inclusive, we present data in tables and curves, we might not be interested in the latest tech development and left to react to an ever-changing media landscape. Let's become our own role models and communicate in a clear, simple and accessible way, using visuals and entertaining features. That might help our program's beneficiaries, our funders, and us.

·         Policy voice: I find the description of this problem puzzling – that it has been difficult for the communication/media for development, and social and behavior change community to find a … voice that an influence policies. How can we hope to work with communities to assist them influencing policies if we cannot do this ourselves? Or does this mean that the work of this field is limited to helping communicate policy decisions already made? If so, what does that mean for our claims of raising community voices?

·         The section on civil society engagement seems to lack an important political analysis. While there may be proliferation of citizens’ voices, it needs to be acknowledged that these voices seem to have less and less power. Increasingly, decisions are made behind closed doors, and private interests seem to have increasing sway, with civil society consultation formalized but not taken seriously. The absence of civil society perspectives in major development organizations should not be seen as understandable!

·         I was startled by the statement later on in the document stating that there are ‘increasingly open societies’, except for a few places (p20). On the contrary, societies are increasingly becoming closed – with space for civil society increasingly restricted. We see this in Russia, in India, in South Africa, in Hungary, Poland, in the US – I could go on. This is one of the key problems we are grappling with at OSF at the moment. This must surely be of key concern to those involved in social change?

·         The paper does not acknowledge another issue that it seems to me is at the top of mind of those involved in strategic communication in policy and political processes – the so-called ‘post truth era’ – in which ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ seem to have become irrelevant and the powerful cynically make use of communication strategies and manipulate media and the whole idea of ‘truth’ in order to achieve their goals. Surely this must be one of the fundamental problems facing the communication for social change community too? How do we convey important information/ educate people/ facilitate informed discussions in such an environment? Proliferation of social media does offer interesting and exciting communication and participatory communication possibilities, but as we are seeing it also carries great threats – of proliferation of falsehoods, manipulation and so on. Surely this is an issue that has to be discussed in a paper of this nature?

Option 1: Developing the standards will certainly add value, but will be a complex process as somoneone noted above given the diversity of approaches used in this field. We have started to work on the broader quality standards at CCP through easy to use tools (e.g. see https://healthcommcapacity.org/qa-in-sbcc/)  - during their development it was definiltey clear that there is scope to have specific quality criteria for the various different approaches (mass media, community mobilizaiton etc). However, the most difficult part will be rolling out these standards and getting them widely recognized, adopted and used.

Option 2: I think that credentialling would be a more straightforward way to achieve this objective (such as the CHES/MCHES credentialing that is quite widely used in US domestic health promotion). Ths is of course based on teh quality standards identified above.

Option 3: This is dependent on some of the other options (i.e. we will only get a serious seat at the table when our work is recognized and valued for its demonstrated impact and there are widely known and used quality standards. With these in place, another strategy to achieve this goal may be to increase the number of SBCC/C4D organizations that have policy experts in house - those who have their finger on the policy pulse, and connected to relevant networks, and have the specific skills required for policy advocacy and lobbying. We also need outspoken champions and believers from outside our core sphere of professionals. For example, leaders such as Bill and Melinda Gates who recognize the importance of communication for development and invite/demand its place at the table.