Communication for Social Change: The Key to Sustainable Development

By Zipporah Orbisi

FHG Quality Engineer and Consultant

What is Communicating for Social Change?

How does a person create the narrative that will help bring about world peace, and more importantly, who will share the story?

At the turn of the millennium the UN brought together 191 countries to come up with a 15 year plan to conquer 8 global objectives called the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDG’s). However, it was understood that these goals were only one part of the solution to creating positive community development across the world. The key to implementing these changes is in the power of communication for social change.

Communicating for social change is assisting individuals and communities in defining their needs to accelerate their prosperity on their terms.

Battle Plan for Sustainable Community Development

As we endeavor to conquer humanitarian crises such as world poverty and wide-spread famine, we must first go through a communication boot camp.

You must begin with engaging your frontline stakeholders in the communities. The people who will be the vessels directly assisting in bringing forth change.

From there, be sure to incorporate all stakeholders and policymakers on common and cohesive grounds for increased social mobilization.

Having that foundational path in development communication will assist with the propagation of change, allowing for long term sustainability.

A Victory Within Reach

So ultimately how will we know if the “communication” is working?

We must measure our efforts through Social Accountability. Finding a means to quantify the efforts—from policymaker to individual—will help to keep progression constant. Communication can be quantified by things such as the number of public information campaigns, platforms for public dialogue and debate, social audits, and feedback loops from citizens to policymakers.

Social accountability provides a societal system of checks and balances which can inform restructuring objectives and laying the foundation for future goal setting.

At the end of 2015, the UN took a look at its 15 year plan results to find an overwhelming success of statistical progression in each of the 8 MDG categories. Extreme poverty was down 33%, literacy rates for children soared to 91%, women now make up 41% of paid workers outside of agriculture, and there were many more fantastical statistics to share.

What I find to be most impressive is the acceptance from local communities to not only drive the change but also push for more results.

The United Nations decided to enter into another 15 year venture, ending in 2030, in effort to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals are our shared vision of humanity and a social contract between the world's leaders and the people,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Together, with individuals in communities leading the efforts, will be the only way to contend with twice the number of original goals.

Together, using communication for social change, we will continue to knock down historical doors of aggrievance and replace them with pathways to world peace.