Advocacy and Public Awareness

Introduction

Sewage management programmes depend critically for their success on effective advocacy and public awareness through information, education and communication. Experiences over the past decades demonstrate that mass media campaigns do not change behaviour and that even the best-designed programmes fail or produce meagre results, because decision makers and intended beneficiaries are not adequately consulted, informed, educated or mobilised. This applies to programmes in developing countries where sewage management is often at a more initial stage of development, but also to programmes in the North where public opinion is being mobilised for environmental issues such as pollution of the marine environment. An issue as distant from the public as sewage management for the protection of the marine environment requires more than a mass media public awareness campaign to mobilize interest in and willingness to pay for improvements.

4.1.1 Understanding advocacy, communication and public awareness

Public awareness is only one element in a wider continuum of a communication process, that includes advocacy; social mobilization and programme communication (McKee 1993). Creating awareness and getting commitment of decision-makers for a social cause is the first component in the continuum and is called advocacy:

Advocacy consists of the organization of information into an argument to be communicated through various interpersonal and media channels with a view to gaining political and social leadership acceptance and preparing a society for a particular development programme.

It is carried out through a large number of what are traditionally known as information and public affairs activities. The goal of advocacy is to make the issue a political or national priority. Advocacy, in the first instance, may be carried out by key people in international agencies, as well as special ambassadors, but is gradually taken over by people in national and local leadership positions and the print and electronic media. Advocacy leads directly to social mobilization.

Social mobilization is the process of bringing together all feasible and practical inter-sectoral social allies to raise people's awareness of and demand for a particular development programme, to assist in the delivery of resources and services and to strengthen community participation for sustainability and self-reliance. In McKee's opinion the concept of social mobilization is the glue that binds advocacy activities to more planned and researched programme communication activities.

Programme communication is the process of identifying, segmenting and targeting specific groups/audiences with particular strategies, messages or training programmes through various mass media and interpersonal channels, traditional and non-traditional. Communication is an instrument based on a two-way dialogue, where senders and receivers of information interact on an equal footing leading to interchange and mutual discovery. Planners, experts and field workers must learn to listen to people about their concerns, needs and possibilities. Policy makers need to be personally contacted to benefit from dialogue and influence decisions.

Below is an example of how McKee's communication planning model was used for the Sanitation for All in Bangladesh programme that the Government of Bangladesh implemented from 1993 to 1998 with UNICEF and Danish and Swiss support. Political will linked with an investment of over 4 million US dollar and use of appropriate and effective allies contributed to an increase in use of sanitary latrines from 10 to nearly 40 percent of the population.

Communication for behavioural change is a complicated process of human actions, reaction and interaction. It involves looking at situations from the view point of other people, and understanding what they are looking for. It means understanding obstacles to change. It means presenting relevant and practical options, and it means telling people what the effect is of the choices they make. Communication can work towards a situation where policy makers, the private sector and the people/communities become committed to programmes and helps to prevent expensive mistakes.

People tend to change when they understand the nature of change, and view it as beneficial, so that they make an informed and conscious choice to include it in their list of priorities. Unless their circumstances are taken into account, and their felt needs are met, no effort for change will be successful. People need to be informed and convinced, or they do not feel part of the effort.

The activities of advocacy, social mobilization and programme communication do not necessarily happen in a consecutive order. In general, advocacy begins the process and leads to social mobilization and programme communication. But advocacy is needed at various times in a programme's life, not only at the beginning.

In terms of analysis and research, the planning continuum is also two-way. Advocacy must remain somewhat opportunistic and therefore less planned and researched. Advocacy makes use of incidents that are known to the general public, such as epidemics, and builds its messages on that. The example below shows such incidence that is used to generate interest in the construction of a sewerage system.

Social mobilization benefits from a thorough analysis of who the best partners are for a particular programme, and what they potentially may contribute. It should also involve some experimentation and lateral thinking since social mobilization is most successful when the chain of command is decentralized, allowing for alliances which may not have been conceived of at the central level. Finally, programme communication has to be backed by planning research, formative evaluation, programme monitoring, as well as impact evaluation, all research steps involved in the process of social marketing. There also has to be an attempt to standardize messages among partners.

There is a need for a greater emphasis on promotion and social marketing to provide incentives and benefits that are important to the success of sanitation improvement programmes. In social marketing the "Four Ps" of marketing are often cited - Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The concept of "product" in social marketing does not necessarily mean a physical product. It could also mean a change in behaviour such as using a latrine, or avoid dumping of waste in a river. What incentives work best is very much depending on the locality. Different types of incentives are required for different stakeholders. Users need incentives to use sanitation facilities and to follow good hygiene practices. Providers require incentives to deliver better services.

4.1.2 Understanding attitudes and behaviour change

What messages are influencing people's knowledge and attitudes and how does that contribute to changes in behaviour? Research from the communication and behavioural change sciences makes clear that this is a complex issue and evidence shows that the clearer the message on a concrete topic, the more the audience can relate to it and the higher the chance that knowledge increases. Research in social sciences has shown that knowledge on a topic may increase, people may even change attitudes, but that the step to improved behaviours and practices is depending on a complex set of social and psychological factors. Hubley introduced the BASNEF model for understanding behaviours in health communication: Beliefs, Attitudes, Subjective Norms and Enabling Factors (Hubley, 1993).

Individual beliefs about the consequences of certain behaviour and the value placed on each consequence lead to personal attitude or judgement. Attitudes combined with subjective norms contribute to behavioural intention. Subjective norms are beliefs about what behaviour other influential people would wish the person to perform. Enabling factors such as income, housing, water supply, agriculture and sanitation should be available so that the intention leads to a change in behaviour.

Below the influences on behaviour and communication actions needed in the BASNEF-model are explained.

The starting point is the individual person's behaviour. However, an understanding of the influences on behaviour can lead to interventions that go beyond the individual to include programmes at the family, community and national levels and involve both educational, social, economic ad political change.

One of the big challenges in mobilizing the public for sewage management, is that human waste disposal is on the one hand an extremely individual issue (the use of toilets and hygiene behaviour is a private subject in most cultures) but on the other, the lack of sewage management is a public issue with repercussions far beyond the level of an individual user. Finding the right carrot (and stick) for the right audience is the key to success.