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Social Change and Youth Advocacy – The Communication for Development Approach
an article by Antonio Palazuelos Prieto
I had the pleasure to take part in a workshop on
Social Change and Youth Advocacy – The
Communication for Development approach In the
framework of the United Network of Young Peace-
builders Study
Session on Youth Advocacy for Peace, in
partnership with FCV, CEIPES, SILBA and Patrir and
funded by the Council of Europe at their Budapest
Youth Centre.
click on photo to enlarge
As participants we had the opportunity to organise
a one session workshop in our expertise areas. The
workshop linked Communication for Development with
the main topic of the Study Session. Using non-
formal education techniques, the twelve
participants discovered this approach, thus how to
use communication to tackle social challenges
which their roots are linked to social behaviors.
They were representing youth organizations from
Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia, Georgia, Kosovo, Italy,
Romania, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey and
UK.
Communication for Development aims to empower
vulnerable communities, including young groups, to
make their voices heard in decision making
processes and being involved in democratic
citizenship, as recognised by the United Nations
General Assembly in 1997 (Article 7, Resolution
51/172).
According to UNICEF and UNDP methodologies of
Communication for Development, a balanced
combination of communication tools, channels, media
and techniques at micro, meso and macro levels is
needed to achieve this empowerment.
Thus participants identified different challenging
situations in their countries of origin in order
to create a Communication for Development Strategy
and apply Communication for Behavior Change (micro
level), Communication for Social Change and
Mobilisation (meso level) and Communication for
Advocacy (macro level).
Some of these challenges identified were
interreligious dialogue, urban trash, youth
violence, public governance and youth
unemployment. In groups they analysed the
behaviors that cause that issues and defined some
strategies to deal with them.
After sharing the main findings and conclusions of
the group discussions, participants will work in
the strategies for next weeks, in order to
implement Communication for Development in their
communities to promote behaviour and social
change, as well as social mobilization and
advocacy.
The follow up activities will be accompanied by
the facilitator of the workshop to support the
participant’s process of implementation of
Communication for Development and became agents of
change in their communities.
Participants highlighted the usefulness of this
approach and expressed their interest to work with
it and implementing the strategies in their
communities. Nevertheless, they manifested their
will in continuing gaining expertise in this field
and the need to receive further support in order
to monitor and evaluate their strategies.
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Is there a renewed movement of solidarity by the new generation?,
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by program area
