The Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC)

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Projects succeed when they’re able to cause change in their communities. However, creating change on a large scale is much easier said than done. In this blog post, I’ll explain an effective guide to generating change: the Social Behaviour Change Communication model, or SBCC for short. SBCC is different from the older “awareness raising” or even the “Behaviour Change Communications (BCC)” model. SBCC is a way of reaching out to people on an individual and communal level in order to help them understand what your project is about and cooperate with it. It has three main components: 

1. Social Change: New research indicates that Behaviour Change is only effective when the values of the society are in agreement with it. In short, individuals won’t change their behaviour if they have to go against their cultural or societal values to do so. As a result, Social Change, where the values of the society are also adjusted to enable the project’s success, is critical.

2. Behaviour Change: This refers to the need of a project to change people’s behaviours, or the way that they act on an individual level. In Behaviour Change, a project intervenes on a personal level.  In the case of the informal economy, a project may address discrimination against people with disabilities by encouraging community members to include them in their savings groups. If individuals actually include people with disabilities whereas they did not do so before, it would be Behaviour Change.

3. Communication: This part is the most vital in the entire model. Communication is the way that both Social and Behaviour Change occur. Communication in this model has several criteria that it must meet in order to be effective:

   • The target audience’s needs and preferences must be understood.

   • Ideally, the channels through which this communication occurs should be ones that individuals and societies already use, rather than new ones they must be introduced to.

   • Communication should not include destroying or removing local values, practices, and traditions. This model emphasizes changing, rather than removing these. Therefore, communication should adapt and be mindful of the pre-existing conditions of the society that the project wishes to change.

Social Behaviour Change Communication is a highly effective tool for effecting change on a major level. To learn more about the specifics of practicing it, I recommend that you view the documents uploaded to the Library about it, posted below.

• Defining Social Behavior Change Communication
• Introduction to SBCC
• The First Stage in SBCC - Understanding the Situation
• The Second Stage in SBCC - Focusing and Designing
• The Third Stage in SBCC - Creating
• The Fourth Stage in SBCC - Implementing and Monitoring
• The Fifth Stage in SBCC - Evaluating and Replanning