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.
Case Study: Maternal and Child Health Section of the Georgia Department of Public Health
The Client
The Georgia Department of Public Health is composed of several sections, including a section dedicated to women and children under their health promotion division. The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Section includes family planning, newborn screening and intervention, and medical services for women and youth; and provides information to families, medical providers, and researchers.
The Challenge
Position the Maternal and Child Health Section to be a recognizable stand alone brand.
Optimize engagement with target audiences by ensuring the right information is easily accessible to the right target audience.
Get all 18 health districts online and trained to use digitized workflows to increase efficiency
Brand Development -
Ensure cohesiveness of MCH Brand identity apart from general DPH
Strategic Communications -
Create internal processes including an intranet, and train people on updated digitized workflow
Edit publications and other marketing collateral
Web Development-
Update website, including copy and create portals geared to each audience.
Shared relevant messaging on related national health observances
A user-centered MCH home page with separate portals that would explicitly communicate with each of the Section's major target audiences—families, providers, and researchers—in language they were familiar with.
An intranet for communication between the main office and 18 health districts.
Written tutorials on digitized workflows.
Training of 10 individuals on intranet and digital workflow who went out and trained individuals at 18 district offices.
Increased engagement on Twitter in response to health observance messaging.
A World with No Mission to Drive It?
What would a world with no nonprofits and mission-driven organizations look like?
In recent years, a handful of large nonprofits in the U.S. have soured the reputations of nonprofits and other donor funded institutions, making people skeptical about how much good they truly do.
Whether it’s hearing about some pastor’s outlandish salary (yes, churches and other places of worship are nonprofits too), or seeing published financial statements that reveal only a minuscule amount of each dollar in donations goes toward actual programming while the rest goes towards administrative costs (i.e. the CEO’s preposterous salary) and “overhead,” the nonprofit and mission-driven sectors can hardly be considered uncorrupted.
Even so, there is clear evidence that resources can be even more effective in the service of those in need when they are combined and managed by those who are knowledgeable about a problem and experienced in solving it.
So imagine,
a world with no mission to drive it.
What would that even look like?
As of 2016, there were over 1.5 million nonprofits operating in the United States alone. (Source)
If we just imagined a nation without nonprofits and mission-driven entities, then we would have to envision an America without public schools. A nation with no formal places of worship.
There would be no public hospitals.
No labor unions.
No chambers of commerce or professional associations.
There would be no museums and no orchestras.
There would be no service or expressive organizations.
America’s third largest workforce would be nonexistent. At least 11.9 million more people would be unemployed. (Source)
In a world without nonprofits 7.4% of the world’s workforce and more than 10% of the workforce in at least 5 other countries would be without jobs. (Source)
There would be no people with an intimate local knowledge of their community. No changemakers and social innovators.
The people who currently belong to small, local organizations and who have a thorough understanding of the needs of their community and the best ways to meet them would have no place in society.
There would be no organized channel for people with a specific expertise to share it with those who need it most and yet cannot afford it.
Who would work on solving the global problems of poverty and pollution? Of deforestation and resource depletion? Of equal human rights and quality education for all?
Nonprofits are needed. Mission-driven organizations make the world go round.
They raise awareness about issues that would otherwise go unnoticed and unresolved.
Nonprofits advocate on behalf of the people they serve. People whose voices would otherwise go unheard.
Service organizations provide aid and assistance to groups and populations that would otherwise go unseen.
Expressive organizations (think sports and the arts) offer channels and outlets for people to develop abilities and talents that would otherwise go untapped.
In a world without government agencies, nonprofits, and other impact institutions there would be no parks, no reserves, and no community gardens.
People who have seen loved ones suffer with a disease could not anticipate one day finding a cure.
Those who are marginalized, overlooked, and/or deep in poverty’s grasp could not look forward to change.