Program Committee General Discussion

Hi Everyone

We have set up a private coordination and communication space for the Program Sub-Committee for the Secretariat for the SBCC Summit. We have uploaded all the papers and meeting notes from these discussions that we could find (if you notice any that are missing please send them along and we’ll post them). As there are two sub-groups for this committee ‘Big Structure’ (the group looking at the agenda and timetable for the conference) and Abstracts (the group looking at Abstract criteria and reviewers) we have also created two sections for documents pertaining to those discussions.  We have brought them together in the context of a platform that also supports you to make comments etc. For spam reasons we approve all comments so please do not expect to see them immediately.

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Program Committee Minutes and Agendas

Program Committee Members (please note we added some test accounts just to keep an eye on things)

Big Structure Working Group (Agenda and timetable)

Abstracts Working Group

Program Committee General Discussion (within which this note will appear)

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Thanks Chris

Hi Everyone

This will be discussed at the Secretariat on Thursday but as we'll been having ongoing discussions about how this structure works and what other committees are doing it will be useful to have the draft for our discussion tomorrow.

You'll find it attached below.

Hi Everyone

I believe our meeting for tomorrow is still on and thought it would be ok to share this note which I sent to Sonali but not realise we won't have time to discuss before tomorrow anyway.  We can use some, all or none of what follows but I thought it might help as we move forward fomr abstract selection to building the actual program. 

I have made a few 'quick' notes below that we could possibly use to start the next phase.  They seem long but basically amount to an observation that we need to do a little more work to the accepted abstract lists to make them clear, we need to go back to the Summit paper as it has direction on how to organise things and there is also some guidance to be found in some of our decisions related to the agenda.  I hope these are helpful:

 1.      We need to start with a complete and clear list of all the accepted abstracts with enough basic background info to allow us to see how they fit in terms of topics, Summit theme, geography, type of presentation, SBCC and/or EE.

As all of us have been saying it is a complex process with several moving parts that need to be coordinated.  We now have the accepted abstracts for pre-formed panels, panelists (but not yet formed into panels), skills building, multi-media, and Comms Talks.  In many ways this is the soil that we'll use to plant the lessons, ideas and outputs we want people to take away with them.  So we have a field but it still needs to be plowed and planted.  Enough metaphor!

Caroline sent me all the accepted abstracts though they vary in content and organisation and I still find it a little tough in places to interpret which are the ones we've accepted. Also they do not have the same information available on the same sheet.  To start I think it would be good for us to get all the accepted abstracts into a single excel with tabs for each type of presentation (Oral, Panel, Pre-formed Panel, Multi-media, Skills Building, Comm's Talk).  Each sheet should contain the same information (I might be missing something here but I would say at least):

Abstract title

Country Base

Geographic Scope

SBCC/EE, SBCC or EE

Theme (1. What works, 2. Making sense of now, 3. Agenda and voice)

NOTE: It would be also useful to also have the following but I am not sure how much work would have to go into pulling this together or how often we’d need to refer to it:

Abstract

Reviewer comments

Evaluation (formative, process, monitoring etc)

Methods (Qual/Quan/Mixed Method)

Designs (Pqrticipant observation, case study, ethnography, time series, quasi-experimental etc)

Topic (Agriculture, Environment, Governance and democracy, Economic development, Development assistance, Gender, Humanitarian response and disaster management, Education, Health, Marginalized/At-Risk Populations)

2.     

We need to refresh ourselves on the key conference themes.  First the focus is on ‘What works’ and the paper that explained the rationale which is on the website at :  https://sbccsummit.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/whythissummit.png 

It says:

At its core, the conference will therefore address some of the primary challenges facing the SBCC community: understanding what approaches work and what investments in SBCC programming can expect to deliver, and making sense of the complexity and diversity in the field of SBCC that would facilitate greater investment.

It also provides some insight into how the different themes are to be interpreted?

What works - Examples of innovation and creative approaches will be woven throughout the conference, and encouraged to reflect on whether and how innovation worked in achieving objectives. Examples of innovation in research, monitoring, measurement and evaluation will also be encouraged as will those that have integrated SBCC into national development policy and systems.  What can be learned from those countries where Ministries have established strong SBCC units or made explicit in national health policies a commitment to prioritizing SBCC, and what the experience of prioritizing risk communication within government strategies has shown (for example, in the wake of the Ebola epidemic).  Lessons will be drawn from these examples through innovative peer review processes including the formation of a “what works” team made up of a practitioner, donor, developing country organization, and academic or research organization who, at the beginning of each day, will reflect on what they have heard and whether they are gaining insights around what works.

Making sense of now – Will focus on a series of panels and debates organized to better understand the current state of SBCC in relation to current development challenges, and to reflect on how SBCC is organized and conceptualized to:

Encourage dialogue and discussion around diverse strands of social and behavior change communication approaches (socio-ecological models, human centered design, behavioral economics, digital first strategies, etc.).

Explore how broader political, economic and social tremors are shaping SBCC contexts including but not limited to: increasing authoritarianism, violent extremism, attacks on media freedom, cross-border movements, climate change, and humanitarian disasters.

Showcase how innovation, experimentation and risk-taking can be encouraged.

Highlight and develop current efforts to improve the status, substance and professionalism of the field, including the planned new global mechanism to advance the communication and media for development, social and behavior change field of work; the WHO reporting standards and business case; and linkages to the SDGs.

Examine how and whether national and international policy has shifted or increased prioritization of SBCC.

Voice and Agenda Setting – Will be a series of conversations looking to the future designed to:

Identify what policies need to be created or changed and what capacities need to be built to ensure people have voice in shaping the agenda.

Define the conditions needed to ensure greater investment in SBCC by governments, CSOs, funders and others.

Determine how and when a focus on shifting norms and behaviors makes sense when larger power structures, policy environments, political paralysis or lack of services can constitute problems that overwhelm the capacity of individuals or communities to act.

Generate stronger South-South cooperation and South-North leadership/cooperation.

So the paper provides some direction for organising the agenda. 

‘What works’ presentations focused on innovative and creative approaches with good evidence (peer reviewed if possible) should be ‘woven throughout’ so each element of the Summit should have an aspect of this.  These presentations of whatever type will be sought out and reviewed by the ‘What works’ team who will share their perspectives each day.  (We will likely have other ways of capturing what works impressions form participants using internal Summit communication.)

Making sense of now provides some hints as to the types of panels we want to form or look for in the pre-formed panels.  Panels focused on communication approaches, broad changes shaping SBCC contexts, building professionalism in the field, and looking at policy and SBCC prioritisation.

Voice and agenda setting is described as a series of conversations (plenary discussions?) on policies and capacities to ensure voice, increasing investment in SBCC, behaviour change in larger power structures, and building S/S cooperation and N/S leadership/cooperation.

3.     

Each day will begin with a plenary.  Those plenaries will have a keynote who will focus on and address a topic of central import to the Summit.  These keynotes could be used to provide themes for other elements of each day such as the Comm Talk(s) selected, panel or other presentations made at the plenary, the shape of some panels during the day, multi-media selections etc.  The selection of keynotes is therefore an important element to the flow and cohesion of each day.

4.     

The EE day will need to focus on EE.  Pre-formed panels and other panels formed form individual abstract submissions will need to be EE focused as will Comm Talks, Multi-media and skills building sessions.  However, we may not want to bar ourselves from having relevant EE presentations on other days and may want to consider some non-EE panels or other types of sessions during the EE day as well.

5.     

There are other areas of the agenda to fill in such as building in spaces to create and complete Summit outputs, the closing sessions each afternoon and evening sessions which need to include a reception, an EE event, a multi-media show perhaps a free evening and we need to start thinking about open sessions though perhaps that can come after we get the panels formed with the right mix of What works and Making sense of now and the voice and agenda setting conversations outlined. 

6.     

Finally, there will be some panels which we will create ourselves such as the reflection panel with a representative from each of the organisers and a panel set aside for UNICEF that’s been discussed with the Sponsorship cttee.  We will also need to determine if the plenary sessions should have panels and if so how should we constitute them?

Cheers

Chris