Why social norms matter

This workshop built on the SA-SNLC’s promise to build capacity among local implementers as well as researchers who are new to the field of social norms programming. Through two sessions spread out over two days, our facilitators imparted crucial foundational knowledge on social norms to participants. The highly interactive session format allowed in-depth exploration of and discussion on the fundamentals of social norms and provided budding researchers with key insights on implementation and budding implementers with a basic theoretical grounding of their work.

The takeaways from the workshop were:

• Defining social norms and distinguishing them from attitudes/beliefs and behaviours.
• Identifying the importance of normative influence between and within different layers of the socio-ecological framework for health and well-being.
• Explaining, in practical terms, how social norms influence health and other behaviours.

Facilitators:

• Dr. Bryan Shaw, Senior Research Officer, Passages Project, Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University
• Andy Bhanot, Director of Social and Behaviour Change Communication at PCI India
• Dr. Anjalee Kohli, Technical Director, Passages Project at the Institute for Reproductive Health