2.3 Develop Community Engagement Strategy

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2.3.1 Identify What Needs to Change for Desired Behaviours to be Adopted and Sustained (Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis)
2.3.2 Identify community engagement activities appropriate to supporting adoption of desired changes
2.3.3 Prepare to implement community engagement activities
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

2.3.1 Identify What Needs to Change for Desired Behaviours to be Adopted and Sustained (Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis)

This is sometimes referred to as a barrier analysis, or COM-B diagnosis, which is a process that seeks to understand the specific barriers and motivators to the adoption of desired changes. In this context, barriers refer to what keeps people from practicing a desired behaviour, and motivators or benefits refers to what encourages them to adopt it. Conducting a barrier analysis on each of the desired behaviours to be promoted is highly recommended and widely recognized as the most critical step to designing successful behaviour change projects [21, 20, 31, 74].

The COM-B model of behaviour is a particularly useful framework for helping you diagnose what needs to change for community members to adopt the desired behaviours because it enables you to use evidence based behavioural change science to identify the most appropriate types of intervention functions to support the adoption of each behaviour [21]. As we know that changing behaviours of individuals, groups, or populations involves changing one or more of the following: capability, opportunity, and motivation; it makes sense to use the COM-B framework to diagnose what needs to change for desired behaviours to be adopted.

When collecting information to understand barriers and motivators to the adoption of desired behaviour, it is important to seek insights from as many relevant sources as possible, as the most accurate understanding is gained through the inclusion of multiple perspectives [21]. For example, within the animal owning community, men, women and other marginalized and vulnerable groups can face unique challenges and barriers to change, and have different opportunities available to them. Your understanding of intersectionality within the community context will be helpful to ensuring you create opportunities for different voices and their experiences to be considered in the identification of barriers and motivators to the adoption of the desired behaviours.

There are many ways to collect this information and using a variety of methods is recommended. You can be more confident in your results when you obtain a consistent picture of the behaviour and factors influencing it from more than one source [21]. Methods may include: KIIs, FGDs, surveys, direct observation, review of reports and literature, and expert opinion, and your choice is likely to be influenced by the time and resources at your disposal.

A Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis Community Question Guide is provided as a facilitator resource to support this process, along with recommendations for additional external resources to support barrier analysis. It is recommended to employ participatory approaches and tools when conducting such assessments. Results from participatory activities and your observations thus far should have generated insights on the local context and animal owning community, which can be used to identify the potential barriers and motivators/benefits for each of the desired behaviours.

Specifically, it is helpful to refer to the following:

1. The causal factors identified during root cause analysis of welfare issues.
2. Resources and support identified by target peer group as needed to support their adoption of agreed upon actions from the Community Animal Welfare Action Planning activity.
3. Information gathered from community consultations and observations during the initiation phase such as:
   • Their priority motivations/concerns both in their lives and in terms of their animals
   • Their general level of awareness of animal welfare issue.
   • Their existing animal care, management and/or use practices associated with the animal welfare issues, and what they like and do not like about them.
   • Gender roles and responsibilities generally as well as in relation to animal care and management.
   • Access and availability of animal-related services and resources, and your project or its partners’ plans to address any identified access or availability issues.

Once you have conducted a COM-B analysis to diagnose each desired behaviour in terms of what needs to change in order for the target group to adopt it, consider creating a table similar to the example below to help you map out what needs to change in relation to each COM-B component (see second column of Table 8 below).

The table below outlines a completed version of this behaviour change/COM-B diagnosis exercise to explore what needs to change for urban donkey cart drivers in Kenya to adopt the behaviour of using verbal and body communication cues to motivate donkeys to move (rather than whipping them).

COM-B Diagnosis Table: Identify What Needs to Change
Desired Change/Behaviour Change Statement (who + what + any relevant details (e.g. when/where/how often/with whom):
Urban donkey cart drivers in Kenya (who) guiding their donkeys using verbal and body communication (what) whenever the donkeys are required to move.

COM-B Components	What needs to happen (pre-conditions) for the desired behaviour to occur and be maintained? (List what the target group or environment needs in terms of each COM-B component)	Is there a need for change? (Y/N) If yes, specify exactly what your community engagement project activities need to achieve in statement as follows: Increase/decrease/improve/reduce…. Perception that… Availability of/access to… The ability to…
Physical Capability Physical skills, strength, or stamina (e.g. ability or proficiency acquired through practice required for desired behaviour to be adopted)	i. Need to have skills to effectively communicate with the donkeys using body language.	i. YES - Increase urban donkey owning cart drivers’ ability to use verbal or body to communicate with the donkeys and train donkeys to respond with desired behaviours without using a whip.
Psychological Capability Knowledge, cognitive and interpersonal skills, memory, attention and/or decision processes, behavioural regulation (impulses/inhibitions)	i. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need knowledge of alternative positive methods of communication with donkeys which does not involve a whipping. ii. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need knowledge of where to go to receive training on alternative human handling methods. iii. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need knowledge of how to use alternative positive methods of communication and humane handing instead of whipping. iv. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to understand how whipping adversely impacts donkeys and the benefits they desire from using their animals as well as their core values where appropriate. v. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to be able to regulate their use of substances as this can lead to them inhumanely handling their animals with whips.	i. YES – increase urban donkey owning cart drivers’ awareness of alternative methods of communication which do not involve whipping. ii. YES - increase urban donkey owning cart drivers’ awareness where to go to receive training on alternative humane handling methods. iii. YES - increase urban donkey owning cart drivers’ awareness of how to use alternative positive methods of communication and humane handing instead of whipping. iv. YES- Improve urban donkey owning cart drivers’ understanding of linkages between whipping and adverse outcomes for cart drivers and their donkeys. v. YES – Improve the ability of substance abusing donkey owning cart drivers to regulate their impulses to use intoxicating substances during times they are handling their donkeys.
Physical Opportunity Environmental context and resources (e.g. time, triggers, resources, locations, or physical barriers etc.)	i. Need safe road conditions to reduce the need for donkey cart drivers to whip their donkeys to respond to the risks posed by vehicles who share the roads. ii. Need water point access points which enable donkey cart drivers to collect/load water quickly to meet client needs and mitigate challenges with manoeuvring which often results in increased whipping.	i. YES – Improve safety measures to ensure vehicles and donkey carts can safely share the road ii. YES - Improve ease of access to water points for donkey carts.
Social Opportunity • interpersonal influences and support, social cues, and cultural norms/expectations • Support from others • Social or cultural acceptability	i. Urban donkey cart clients need to value animals’ welfare more than money and time savings and not pressure donkey cart drivers to overload their donkeys and move quickly or threaten taking their business elsewhere as this causes cart drivers to whip their animals.	i. YES – Improve perceptions of the urban donkey cart clients that ensuring the welfare of donkeys who are sentient beings is more valuable than potential time and money savings (e.g. create new social norms)
Reflective Motivation •Personal / professional / social roles and identity, beliefs about capabilities, beliefs about consequences, attitude/optimism, intention, goals	i. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to believe that donkeys are not stubborn and able to learn without whipping. ii. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to believe that donkeys are sentient beings. iii. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to have compassion and empathy for their donkeys.	i. YES - Decrease the perception of donkey owning cart drivers that donkeys are stubborn and only respond when whipped. ii. NO – Already exists amongst cart drivers iii. NO – Already exists amongst cart drivers
Automatic Motivation • Reinforcement (habit or routine), Emotion (emotional response to current or new practice) • What habits or routines need to be created/modified/eliminated?	i. Urban donkey owning cart drivers need to develop new routines related to the use of alternatives to whipping	i. YES - Increase the ability of donkey owning cart drivers to understand and implement new routines for motivating/communicating with their donkeys.

Table 8: COM-B Behavioural Diagnosis – Identifying What Needs to Change for Desired Behaviours to be Adopted

2.3.2 Identify community engagement activities appropriate to supporting adoption of desired changes

Once you have specified what needs to happen for the target group to adopt the desired behaviour based on your understanding of barriers and motivators to change, identify what needs to change, or where the gaps are, within the third column of the COM-B diagnosis table.

Look at what you have listed as needing to be in place for the target group to adopt and sustain the desired behaviour within the second column of the table above and identify which of the elements listed are not currently in place/require change. For every element identified as needing change, craft specific statements about what the project needs to achieve to make sure it is addresses and desired behaviours can be adopted. You should be able to specify exactly what the project aims to achieve in one of the following ways [20]:

For example:

• Increase men’s knowledge of where to obtain quality animal health services
• Decrease women’s perception that feeding animal before working them is harmful.
• Improve the availability of low-cost welfare friendly animal harness for men and women animal owners.
• Improve the ability of women and children to prepare feed in ways that help prevents colic

These statements should not be written with specific activities already in mind, as these will be identified in the following steps, and it is important to remain open to all options you can use for addressing the barriers/motivators [20]. It is useful to consider the phrasing of these statements can help you to define your project’s outputs within your log frame and will be used to develop output indicators in later steps.

If you find you are unable to complete any parts of Table 8 above, it is highly recommended you conduct a structured discussion with community stakeholders or key informants at the very least, to better understand their perceptions related to barriers and motivators to their adoption of the desired behaviours. Your ability to complete Table 8 above is also a useful check point to make sure that any barriers to adoption which are identified can be addressed through the work of CCAs and/or the broader project. If not, you may wish to reconsider whether it is ethical and effective to promote the adoption of the behaviour if the project is unable to take action to address the barriers to its adoption.

Once you have completed your own table for each of the behaviours the project seeks to promote, input relevant information about what needs to change (e.g. barriers and motivators) and what your community engagement/project activities need achieve to address them within the Behaviour Change Planning Table (see step 3 and 4) provided as a facilitator resource.

After diagnosing what needs to change for the desired behaviour to occur using the COM-B framework, it is possible to identify the type of intervention functions which will be most effective at achieving the desired change. It is recommended to use the behaviour change wheel to support the identification of intervention functions and behaviour change techniques (BCTs), as it provides a systematic and theoretically guided method for identifying the most effective strategies to implement to support adoption of a desired behaviour. Follow the guidance in the facilitator resource Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies Based on COM-B Diagnosis to select the most appropriate intervention functions and BCTs based on the COM-B behavioural diagnosis of behavioural barriers and motivators the project has identified need to change in the previous step. Once you have identified the BCTs that are effective for addressing the identified barriers and motivators, use the APEASE criteria to narrow your selection. Once you have selected the BCTs which meet the APEASE criteria, identify project activities in line with the selected BCTs and include these within the final column of the “Behaviour Change Planning Table” template provided in facilitator resources . The aim is to develop a mix of activities that address all (or as many as possible) of the “changes your activities need to achieve” (Step 4 of the Behaviour Change Planning Table), recognizing the same activity can address more than one of the changes that need to be achieved [20].

Consider incorporating the following participatory tools as part of your community engagement activities, if they support the type of intervention strategy selected and have not already been implemented:

• Animal Welfare Conversation Tool
• Story Telling (a, b, c)
• If I Were an Animal
• Animal Feelings Analysis
• Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis
• Animal Welfare Snakes and Ladders Game
• Thriving not Surviving
• Animal Welfare Transect Walk

Depending on the results of your COM-B diagnosis of barriers and motivators for the desired behaviour and identification of BCTs, consider whether a Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach would be useful to supporting your community engagement activities to increase awareness, capacity, or changing social norms.

Spending a few weeks to design your community engagement activities using the behaviour change framework detailed in the above-mentioned steps is a worthwhile investment as it can significantly reduce the risk of you and your team wasting energy, time, and resources on activities that do not deliver the results you hoped for [20]. At the same time, it is recognised that you may not have the time and resources to follow all the recommended steps in this process for all the behaviours you desire to promote [20]. In such cases, it is recommended to at the very least use the following advice based on research from The Behavioural Insights Team about what makes behaviour change activities most successful, by checking that any behaviour change activities you decide to implement are designed to make doing the behaviour EAST: Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely [20]:

• Easy: Learn what makes practicing the behaviour difficult and help your priority groups to make it easier – involving less hassle, time, or money. If you promote a complex goal, break it down into smaller actions.
• Attractive: People are motivated to do something when it brings them what they want most, such as income, peace of mind, happiness, or good health. Ensure that your activities help people experience the benefits of practicing the behaviour by, for example, letting them test it (e.g. experience using a new type of welfare friendly equipment); sharing successful examples (e.g. of an animal owning family who reduced the incidence of animal illness by adopting the promoted prevention techniques); and using appealing messages that engage people’s emotions.
• Social: People are heavily influenced by what people around them do. So, let’s take advantage of it! Showing that some people already practice the promoted behaviour, using the power of social networks (e.g. peer-to-peer), or encouraging people to commit to someone to practice a behaviour often works well!
• Timely: The same campaign conducted at different times can have drastically different levels of success. Schedule your campaign for when people are most receptive (e.g. promoting the purchase of latrine after harvest when people have money; or posting hand washing messages in kitchens).

2.3.3 Prepare to implement community engagement activities

After identifying community engagement activities to support desired behaviour change, the next step is to refine the initial ideas with CCAs and work with them to develop a plan of implementation. IT is important to consider CCAs time commitment to the project, the size of their target peer groups, their geographic spread, and whether change agents will be engaging their peers through home visits or group activities to ensure project activities can be delivered within the time available to CCAs. It is also helpful to plan activities with an understanding of the stages of change, anticipating that peer groups are likely to be in contemplation and preparation stages of change early on, and thus activities related to raising awareness of benefits of behaviour change, increasing social pressure, and capacity building are likely to be more appropriate early on in project implementation. Refer to Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change in facilitator resources for support with this. However, if your project/organization prioritized animal welfare issues and behavioural change priorities itself, it is likely that individuals may be in the pre-contemplation stage of behaviour change, and that CCAs may need to undertake additional work to first raise awareness of issues by supporting their peers to come to their own realizations about welfare issues and their related behaviours.

This can be supported by:

• Reviewing and discuss the animal welfare transect walk results of the target peer household to enable target peers to self-evaluate their animals’ welfare condition.
• Seeking to understand their peers’ values, listening to their feelings about welfare issues, and helping them to frame the change process in their own terms.
• Supporting their peers in assessing the impact of their behaviour and create dissonance between their values and current practices and help them internalize the alignment between desired behaviour changes and the things that they value.
• Developing their peers understanding of animal needs and cultivate compassion their animals, which can be supported by the PLA tools recommended at the end of this section.

As relapse is possible at any point, it is important to encourage CCAs and their action plans to be flexible so they can tailor their engagement with target peers based on where they are in their stage of change as needed. Consider crafting CCA action plans with a limited focus on shorter interim intervals (e.g. quarterly) and limited focus to promote flexibility for accommodating peer groups’ progress through the stages of change and are more manageable. A Community Change Agent Personal Action Plan template is provided for use in the facilitator resources.

It is important that CCAs understand and agree to undertake the community engagement activities and are provided opportunities to feedback to you to ensure their action plans are realistic and achievable. When making the CCA action plan, it is also important to identify the resources and support needed for CCAs to implement activities (e.g. posters, role play scripts, linkages with local animal health service providers etc.). Once identified, you can begin developing or securing identified resources. Refer to the facilitator resource Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging for guidance on development of outreach resources.

These planning discussions are also a good time to discuss how they plan support their peers and implement community engagement activities in a way that promote equality and participation, regardless of gender or other status (e.g. migratory status). For example, scheduling home visits or trainings at times convenient to different groups, and taking travel time, distance, and potential risks associated with participation and modes of travel to ensure safeguarding and safe transit.

Once community engagement activities are agreed in CCAs personal action plans, identify CCA capacity building needs and training implementation schedule, and update the CCA training plan. If feasible, it is recommended to conduct exposure visits with CCAs to other project sites if available so they can learn from the experiences of other peers.

In addition to building CCA capacity, it is important to provide CCAs with ongoing mentoring and support throughout the implementation of the project and develop a process and schedule for CCA’s to regularly report their activities and progress back to you. Consider using the Community Visit Record and Report Template to support CCA progress reporting and discuss when and how they can seek support and escalate matters to you. It is also recommended to set a meeting schedule for ongoing CCA support and mentoring.

Scheduling regular support meetings with CCAs is highly recommended to:

• Review their community engagement records and gauge and support their progress in relation to their Community Change Agent Personal Action Plan
• Gauge their understanding of their peers’ stages of change, general support needs, and ideas and plans for addressing them.
• Support them to adapt their action plans and community engagement strategies as needed.
• Provide follow up trainings as needed to build their capacity and support their continued progress.
• Bring CCAs together to facilitate their collective reflection of their own progress through the stages of change, what helped them, what was challenging, and support them to apply these lessons to strengthen their engagement with their target peer groups.
• Create opportunities for change agents to build a peer support network amongst themselves and learn from each other. This is also useful because it creates opportunities for the perspectives of CCAs representative of different genders and other vulnerable or discriminated groups to be heard and understood by CCAs of other groups. This will also help generate understanding and greater empathy for these different groups, and improve how CCA’s engage with them. This can have further knock-on benefits when community leaders, through their own deeper understanding of others, begin modelling new ideas, norms, and behaviours in relation to community members with different identity or gender backgrounds and socio-economic status.

Developing mechanisms for peer support by convening CCAs through regular progress meetings, trainings or other mechanisms is highly recommended to encourage CCAs mutual support of one another during and beyond the project duration. This is important to supporting the outcomes of the project as well as to promoting the long-term sustainability of CCAs in their roles as community leaders, thereby contributing to the broader promotion of equality within communities beyond the scope project.

It is also recommended to discuss with CCAs your planned frequency of visits to the community to meet with their target peer groups and observe their animals’ welfare condition.

Scheduling regular site visits is important because it enables you to:

• Observe CCAs community engagement skills, provide mentoring support, and identify training support needs.
• Support CCAs in addressing any reported implementation challenges as needed.
• Verify reported progress of behaviour change and animal welfare improvements by CCAs target peer groups, as well as CCA’s personal progress and related effectiveness as role models to others.

Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:

Facilitator Resources
Community Change Agent Personal Action Plan
Behaviour Change Planning Table
Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis Community Question Guide
Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change
Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging
Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies Based on COM-B Diagnosis
Community Visit Record and Report Template
Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Link to References Cited