
Nigeria Toolkit: Demand Generation
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Strengthen Social Mobilization Efforts
What is it?
Social mobilization is one of the strategies for demand generation used by TCI in supported States to improve social norms in favor of family planning at household and community levels. Using high impact social mobilization activities, TCI supports States to drive uptake of family planning services through community-based referrals. Social mobilization activities engage young men and women age 18 to 35 years as potential family planning clients, and who also mobilize other potential clients to use family planning services.
Why is it important?
- Trigger dialogue about family planning at community and household levels
- Normalize family planning use
- Prompt couple discussion
- Correct misinformation and dispel fears surrounding contraceptive use
- Refer women and men to quality family planning services
What are the steps for implementing this approach?
Step 1: Orient SBCC Committee to the Social Mobilization Model
As the focal point for coordination and implementation, it is vital that the SBCC Committee understand the social mobilization model and have their capacity strengthened to be able to cascade the training at ward and community levels. This then entails conducting an orientation for the SBCC Committee as well as ToT for selected Committee members who will conduct the cascade trainings. The orientation and Training of Trainers (ToT) are conducted by TCI’s Technical Partner on social mobilization, Center for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI), with support from the DG Technical Support Leads. Each State adapts the social mobilization approach and materials to suit its context. CCSI also recruits Social Mobilization Association Assistants (SMAs) who will work with the LGA Health Educators in supervising social mobilizers.
Step 2: Recruit and Validate Social Mobilizers
All mobilization activities focus on making FP information available and bringing the services closer to the community members even in hard-to-reach areas in urban slums. The LGA health educators lead the process of recruitment and selection, adapting the criteria to best fit their needs. The social mobilizers are volunteers from the communities.
TCI helps to validate the list of social mobilizers to make sure that they meet the criteria established.
Step 3: Conduct Cascade Training of Social Mobilizers by SBCC Committee Master Trainers
The first two days of the training are hands-on orientation adapted from NURHI. The third day of the training, the newly trained social mobilizers conduct neighborhood campaigns with LGA Health Educators and Social Mobilization Assistants (SMAs) providing oversight.
Step 4: Implement and Monitor Social Mobilization Activities
Each of the LGAs develop a monthly workplan/schedule of social mobilization activities which they plan to implement. The SBCC Committee develops a social mobilization work plan with the social mobilizers to ensure that activities are implemented in a timely manner. They also use a social mobilization coordination chart to enable better planning. These tools help the SBCC Committee to monitor activities as well. By measuring progress, programs and activities can make decisions and adjust plans based on evidence. TCI-supported States implements 4 types of social mobilization activities:
- Neighborhood campaigns – During neighborhood campaigns, mobilizers move from door to door talking about the benefits of FP and referring people to access FP services at nearby facilities.
- Indigenous events and festivals – Obtain permission to man a booth/table with materials on family planning
- Engagement with community associations, like market women, hairdressers, barbers, tailors and motorcycle drivers – Share information on family planning in an association meeting, for example
- Key life events – Mobilizers will identify key life events (weddings, naming and graduations) in their communities, where a mobilizer can have a slot to talk with guests about the benefits of modern FP
The neigborhood campaigns are planned by LGA health educators with the SMAs. They work with and also supervise the mobilizers during this activity. The engagement with community associations as well as key life events are led by social mobilizers after which they provide feedback to the on the outcome to the LGA health educators and SMAs. In addition, the social mobilizers utilize other avenues to generate demand for FP services. They support the SBCC Committee workplan implementation by leveraging on indigenous events to conduct referrals and also utilize community theater performances to conduct referrals.
The social mobilization approach also supports key service delivery interventions such as the 72-Hour Clinic Makeover and the training on LARC for service providers. These activities provided the opportunity to increase service visibility, facilitate knowledge exchange and refer prospective clients using branded referral cards.
Monitoring of these activities included measuring mobilization meeting attendance, supervisor checklists and family planning uptake—through the number of referrals provided compared with the number of completed referrals.
Tips for Using this Approach for Promoting Life Planning for Adolescents & Youth (LPAY)
- Integrate LPAY module into the social mobilization training*
- Adapt branded referral cards so that they now include an age range (15-24, above 24)
* Note: For first year of LPAY intensive programming, CCSI will lead social mobilization activities, but the local CSO will serve as an understudy while CCSI will be providing mentoring and supervision. Then, CSO can transfer their capacity to their staff within their CSO.
Results and Lessons Learned from TCI
Using high impact social mobilization activities, TCI supports States to drive uptake of family planning services through community-based referrals. Social mobilization activities kicked off in earnest in three TCI States – Ogun, Delta and Niger from July 2018 and commenced in Kano and Bauchi in September 2018.
With the commencement of social mobilization activities in these States, 553 mobilizers were trained and a total of 112 social mobilization events including 61 neighborhood campaigns were conducted. Other community-level activities including associations meetings and key life events were leveraged on for family planning/child birth spacing sensitization. A total of 28,102 persons were reached in the five States with family planning messages, 10,449 persons were referred to health Facilities with 2000 persons completing their referrals within a quarter.
Click on the image above to read more about our lessons learned under TCI implementation.
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