Social and Behavioral Change Communication (SBCC) Plan for Parental and Community Engagement

The program aims to achieve age-appropriate, curriculum-defined levels of reading and writing at standards 2 and 4 for at least 75% of classrooms in the target areas. An additional objective is to develop, implement, and demonstrate best approaches to strengthen the quality of education in the target regions for replication consideration in other regions. The program is led by the President's Office – Regional and Local Government (PO-RALG) and the Ministry of Education, Science & Technology (MOEST) in Mainland Tanzania, and the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MOEVT) in Zanzibar. The USAID Tusome Pamoja contractor, RTI, has established offices in each of the four mainland regions and Zanzibar. The program involves the engagement of parents and the wider community in their children's learning, with a critical strategy being the use of social and behavioral change communications to increase parents and community members' adoption of key behaviors that lead to desired project outcomes. Social and behavioral change communications is an evidence-based approach to changing or promoting positive behaviors that has been evolving for the last fifty to sixty years. The field has evolved from initially providing information and educational materials to an audience, to behavior change communications, and now predominantly uses social and behavioral change communications approaches, which look at both the behavior change of individuals and the social norms and greater social context that individuals are immersed in. For purposes of Tusome Pamoja, the project will be using the integrative Model of behavioral change, which is a descriptive and predictive model based on Fishbein's review of the Health Belief Model, Social Cognitive Theory, and five other major behavior prediction theories. The integrative Model predicts that people act on their intentions when they have the necessary skills and when environmental factors do not impede behavioral performance. This model was built upon in a 2008 publication from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Communication Programs, which drew from various theories to summarize eight factors that best explain and predict behavior: intention to perform the behavior, environmental or external constraints and barriers, skills needed to perform the behavior, attitude or belief that the benefits of the behavior outweigh the risks or costs, perceived social or normative pressure, self-efficacy, self-image, and emotional reaction. The SBCC plan will take each of these factors into account to design responsive interventions. Formative research methodology was used to inform the approach, assumptions, and identify likely successful interventions for inclusion in the SBCC plan. This involved grounded evidence from global best practices and other similar project implementations in the region, key informant interviews with sectorial experts and stakeholders, and focus group discussions with parents, community members, local government officials, local leaders, and regional project staff. The first step was to hold 52 focus group discussions in four project regions with students, parents, teachers, Ward Education Coordinators, and District Education Officers in September and October of 2016. These discussions informed the development of the initial situational analysis, which was foundational for the first draft of this SBCC plan.