Under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) task order titled “Measurement and Research Support to Education Strategy Goal 1,” RTI International implemented a three-month SBCC campaign in the Senegalese communities of Kaolack and Rufisque. This campaign included radio broadcasts, community meetings, community-theater, and posters reinforcing a common set of messages regarding what parents and family members could do to help their children learn to read. The objectives of the campaign were to enhance families’ perception of the value of reading, promote children’s reading and literacy as a pleasure and a shared responsibility, and strengthen parents’ confidence in their ability to improve their children’s success in reading. The campaign also helped overcome a lack of reading materials in the community by providing stocks of books that children and families could borrow.

The following poster images were designed for the Social and Behavior Change Communications (SBCC) campaign in the Senegalese school communities of Kaolack and Rufisque. SBCC, a strategy originally used to support public health initiatives, utilizes a series of communication techniques to bring about changes in family members’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to their children learning to read. The five posters found in this document were placed in public spaces in Kaolack and Rufisque and served as one of the many forms of campaign material designed to influence families’ attitudes toward their children’s reading.

Under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) task order titled “Measurement and Research Support to Education Strategy Goal 1,” RTI International implemented a three-month SBCC campaign in the Senegalese communities of Kaolack and Rufisque. This campaign included radio broadcasts, community meetings, community-theater, and posters reinforcing a common set of messages regarding what parents and family members could do to help their children learn to read. The objectives of the campaign were to enhance families’ perception of the value of reading, promote children’s reading and literacy as a pleasure and a shared responsibility, and strengthen parents’ confidence in their ability to improve their children’s success in reading. The campaign also helped overcome a lack of reading materials in the community by providing stocks of books that children and families could borrow.

The USAID-funded Early Grade Reading Activity has been active in 11 districts in Malawi, one of which, Ntcheu, has been selected for implementation of this pilot SBCC campaign. Having seen that the multichannel approach was successful in Senegal at promoting positive changes in households’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, the pilot in Malawi is set up to validate/replicate those findings in a different context. Furthermore, the Malawi pilot will test two variations on the multichannel approach in an attempt to isolate the value added of community theatre as a communication and message reinforcement channel. In collaboration with the Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity, EdData II will implement two versions of the SBCC campaign in the communities associated with 16 schools in the zone of Kasinje (half will include community theater, half will not). Another group of communities in a different zone (Senzani) in Ntcheu District will serve as a comparison (no SBCC activities will take place there). In conjunction with the Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity Staff and a local partner organization, Invest in Knowledge Initiative (IKI), a baseline survey was completed in March 2016. The results of that survey are the subject of this report.

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Office for Economic Growth, Education, and the Environment (E3), the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project has investigated how to employ social and behavior change communication (SBCC) strategies to promote and stimulate home-based support for children learning to read. Recognizing that the dramatic improvements needed in reading outcomes in most developing countries will likely be achieved only through a combination of in-school and athome efforts in support of early literacy, USAID wanted to test how the lessons from successful SBCC campaigns in the health sector could be applied in education. Following an initial pilot SBCC campaign in one district in Senegal (see RTI International, 2015), EdData II initiated a second round of research—in a second district in Senegal (RTI International, 2016), and in one district in Malawi (DeStefano & Cummings, 2015). The USAID-funded Early Grade Reading Activity (June 2013–October 2016) was active in 11 districts in Malawi, one of which, Ntcheu, was selected for implementation of this pilot SBCC campaign. Because the multichannel approach was successful in Senegal at promoting positive changes in households’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, the pilot in Malawi was set up to validate/replicate those findings in a different context. In collaboration with the Malawi Early Grade Reading Activity, EdData II implemented the SBCC campaign in the communities associated with 16 schools in the zone of Kasinje. Another group of communities in a different zone (Senzani) in Ntcheu District served as a comparison (no SBCC activities took place there).

Social and behavior change communication (SBCC) represents the culmination of decades of research and practice in the public health field, where communication has been a critical element of efforts to encourage positive health behaviors. A basic tenet of SBCC is that information is necessary but seldom sufficient to sustainably change behavior (C-Change, 2012). The methodology bridges the gap between awareness and action by influencing the beliefs that can block or enable needed behavior change.

To reinforce school-based education efforts, increased attention is being paid to what happens when children are not in school, especially when they are at home. This report presents the key findings from a survey conducted in two regions of Senegal in April 2015 to determine the reading support that children receive at home. The survey sample was drawn from schools in which the Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), a Senegalese nongovernmental organization (NGO), is implementing a bilingual (French/Wolof) curriculum in grade 1 (designated as “CI” in Senegal) and grade 3 (CE1). Schools were selected from two zones in Senegal: (1) Kaolack, which serves as the intervention area; and (2) Rufisque, which serves as the control area.

This reports summarizes a process to improve performance management and accountability that emphasized participatory data collection and use in Northern Nigeria. Private sector actors at State, LG and school and community level were encouraged to collect data and use it for purposes of advocacy, capacity building, and accountability. At the local government level, community participation was encouraged through a series of forums in which representatives from school staff, parents, business and religious leaders collectively reviewed data on the performance of their primary school education system, established areas for support, and assigned responsibilities. Although successful with support from project funds, it was unclear if the process would survive after the project. This report summarizes a survey of forum participants and is divided into three sections: (i) a short discussion of the data collection process; (ii) a summary review of survey results; and (iii) recommendation for three key areas of sustainability – roles and responsibilities; financing and formalization of the process.

This report summarizes the results from a three-month pilot research activity in Kaolack, Senegal designed to test whether communications techniques can bring about changes in family members’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to their children learning to read. At the end of three months, family members in Kaolack demonstrated strong recall of the main messages of the campaign and were much more likely than control families to espouse beliefs supportive of their children learning to read.

Social and Behavior Change Communication is the systematic application of interactive, theory-based, and research-driven communication processes and strategies to address tipping points for change at the individual, community, and social levels. The files included with this resource include the presentation and background materials used during a seminar on SBCC delivered by Karen Schmidt and Joe DeStefano. The agenda for this SBCC Seminar, delivered in May 2014, was: Part 1: What is Social and Behavior Change Communication? Part 2: What is the history and theoretical basis for SBCC? Part 3: What is the best way to develop a SBCC Strategy?