Social and behavior change communication - participants' manual

This training manual is developed to capacitate health professionals mainly health extension workers working with communities to understand Social Behavior Change (SBC) and apply the principles of SBCC in changing community’s behaviors on WASH behaviors such as Sanitation (safe disposal of human faeces) Hygiene (proper hand washing) and Water (safe handling of drinking water).

The manual comprises four major units; the first unit is about Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) to give an insight to participants on the concepts of SBC and basic elements they need to consider in reaching out to households in particular and the community in general to bring the desired change on various health behaviors in addition to WASH.

The second unit has basic elements of WASH concepts, importance of interventions, WASH doable actions or key messages and introduction of optional WASH products and services with a focus on those low cost and high-quality products that USAID TWASH promotes.

The third unit is about practical WASH household counselling visit where participants will be familiarized with communication materials (flipchart) they will be using while conducting household visits, and application of household visits which are the most important part of the session with the aim of developing the counselling skills of participants. Participants will make a pair and practice counselling target groups with the use of the flip chart.

The fourth and the final unit is explaining the monitoring and evaluation activities with a focus on monitoring tools such as proper documentation and reporting, supervision and review meetings. In this unit standard data collection and reporting formats will be introduced and distributed to participants.

Finally participants will prepare a kebele level plan and submit it to the facilitators on which their subsequent community mobilization and other activities would be monitored.