External actors ... can not foster transformation

Dear Michael, You are on the dot. Communication as a discipline has gradually lost luster with the donor community, with few exceptions, as you have mentioned.  Seems to me that donors have very short fuse. They apparently want to see results as fast as you put a coin in the soda machine and out comes the soda can. Sorry. Human behavior does not change that fast. I think late Everett Rogers had explained the process succinctly.

In response to receding interest of donors, communication community keeps coming up with new jargon and terminology with a hope that it will attract new funding. Alas, this does not work either because basic principles cannot be short circuited.

Now talk about the latest fascination with social media. That's wonderful. However, what percentage of the population has access to social media and what do they learn from it? What is their profile? If users of the social media are just a small fraction of the target population, why are we happily devoting disproportionate resources to SM and ignoring more effective and proven traditional channels of communication?

I admit there are examples of innovative use of mobile phones and laptops as in Bangladesh, but its not enough, and yet to be evaluated. Unless you have a well conceived strategy, based on research findings, jumping to any particular media is no different than in old days when making films was a rage. Whenever, question of IEC came up, film was chosen first before even thinking about the target audience, message, and objectives. Enough said.

Javed S. Ahmad                              
Presently in Florida, USA .    

Commenting on: External actors ... can not foster transformation and Results as fast as you put a coin in the soda machine

I'm really enjoying this thread of conversation. I believe that one of the challenges with SBCC is that it doesn't fit into the 1-year or 2-year or even 5-year project cycle of many externally-funded projects. It is necessary but it is also complex and it's not always an A+B=C equation that funders like to see. Even when people have adopted a change and can be counted as project "success stories" feeding into the quantitative data that reveals that the communication component was effective, those people still need to be targeted with communication messages to sustain that behavior, to reinforce what they're doing and ensure that if we return 10 years later, they're still maintaining the positive behavior. Because ultimately that's what's important. That long term impact is what shows population level change, not just what a single project can say it's accomplished in 1 year.

So, I definitely agree as to the limits of external actors in investing in these kinds of long term needs, especially when they perceive communication as being expensive relative to the impact their evaluations show it is. And of course, as Javed Ahmed said, in the reports, it always looks nicer and snazzier when they have more innovative approaches to communication. For me, I think those innovations of social media and mobile apps and tech-based approaches to communication are important. Yes, they may not apply to the majority of populations most of us in development are targetting right now, but one day, they will, and it's important to learn from what excites people and interests them. We had a project where we created a mobile toolkit for CHEWs to do their counselling sessions from a tablet rather than using the traditional posters and leaflets. Community members were so impressed by the technology and CHEWs themselves felt a little prouder and more confident that they were entrusted with using technology to do their work. The tablets were also equipped with phone capabilities so CHEWs were able to use them to make calls, referrals, etc. It raised their profile and reputation in the community in terms of the receptiveness to their advice. Now this is all participatery qualitative data based on collecting community recordings over time and it's certainly not an indication to trash all posters and leaflets but it's an idea of what bringing tech to health services can do and worth exploring if the funds exist. It doesn't mean  all projects need to go out and give all levels of health workers tablets irrespective of their ability to use or maintain them. However, it is interesting keeping an open mind as to how to increase and build community access to information and messaging in innovative ways.

Ultimately though, it's true that what's most important is to pick not the sexiest, most cutting edge innovations but to pick the most applicable and the most useful for the target audience. Because at the end of the day, the point of SBCC is not a fancy report or an ability to make the impossible determination that it takes x dollars to change someone's mindset to a positive behavior, but rather it's to bring about lasting, meaningful change and that takes time and it takes money and it takes a commitment much more than most external actors can provide. So my idea is that maybe it's better to look at external funding as a launchpad but always have in mind getting the commitment of governments (for whatever little its worth), corporates (with CSR), or even social enteprise, getting them involved in such a way that it's profitable for them to continue to share our messages even after the external actors have gone.