Engagement objective

Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) works with marginalised communities across themes and sectors to address challenges faced by them. In Uttar Pradesh AKF wanted to initiate an intervention to improve early childhood childcare practices. However, prior to a full-fledged roll out AKF wanted to conduct a longitudinal pilot in one district of UP. Bahraich District was chosen for the pilot intervention on nurturing care.

Based on the primary research AKF had concluded that for a successful pilot strong behaviour change communication was key. StratComm was roped in as the behaviour change specialist to develop a robust SBCC package.

Our process

As part of the SBCC package development process StratComm designed and conducted a design thinking workshop. The workshop included participants from the research team, programme implementation team, and the communication team along with thematic specialists on nurturing care.

The workshop focused on how from a human centric perspective the SBCC package could be:

• Accommodative of caregivers’ experiences and perspective.

• Remain empathetic towards the burden of caregiving roles experienced by primary caregivers like mothers and frontline workers

The insights from the workshop, combined with the evidence from the baseline research and experiences of the field team, informed the package development. A key feature of the package design was in-built phased testing and feedback mechanism that enabled a reiterative refinement process throughout the various phases.

Key outcomes

The SBCC package includes fathers and grandmothers as important caregivers in addition to the mother and frontline workers. It carves a path for collaborative action, discussions and decision making as well as sharing of responsibilities between the couple/parents and grandparents. It also addresses the burden of caregiving responsibilities on older siblings and impact of domestic violence on children.

The endline study shows an increase in the number of women reporting involvement of husbands and mothers in law in child care.

Based on the experiences of the pilot, StratComm further supported Aga Khan Foundation in facilitating scale up. To read more about this click here.