Students, government officials and members of civil society can now enrol for short courses aimed at reducing the impact of harmful practices on children.
The two courses introduced by the University of Nairobi and Unicef in collaboration with other partners will be available to change-makers in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia.
Other partners include the International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP) and the Africa Coordinating Center for the Abandonment of FGM (ACCAF).
The courses according to Unicef have been introduced in recognising the profound impact of harmful social norms on children and communities and the changes needed.
According to UoN VC Stephen Kiama, the courses are the first locally and will enable understanding how behaviours are formed.
They will also help understand the best approaches to gain positive social and behavioural change in communities with endemic harmful practices that include Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
“The launch of the social norm change programming and measurement course comes at an opportune moment for the University, CISP, UNICEF and all other development partners,” Kiama said.
Unicef Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) Deputy Regional Director Lieke van de Wiel said the partnership between academia and the development sector is an essential catalyst for creating meaningful and sustainable behaviour change for children.
“Academia’s research-driven expertise, when combined with the practical insights of the development sector, empowers us to better understand, address, and ultimately transform complex societal behaviours,” Wiel said.
“It is through this collaboration that we can equip future generations with the knowledge and tools to promote positive change on a broader scale.”
Will be further noted that the process will lead to the mainstreaming of social norms programming and measurement across faculties and more broadly in the Eastern and Southern Africa region.
For many years, efforts to combat these harmful practices, accompanied by efforts in other critical sectors such as health, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), have predominantly centred around awareness-raising and communication campaigns.
The underlying belief was that by making people aware of the consequences of their actions and the benefits of positive behaviour change would naturally follow.
However, evidence has shown this approach often leads to short-lived behaviour change.
One of the major challenges in understanding human behaviour is the need for a deeper understanding of the complexities associated with social norms and how to effectively measure change.
“As a university, we intend to escalate the training to cover a wider catchment to build the necessary capacity for community champions drawn from civil society organisations, ministries of health, universities, teaching faculty and students,” Kiama said.
The Social Norms Courses have been developed with the technical and financial support of the Global Programme to End Child Marriage, which is jointly implemented by UNICEF and UNFPA in 25 countries, including Mozambique, Zambia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda.
These programmes have over the years contributed significantly to generating knowledge and potentially effective solutions to address harmful social norms.