3.1 Deliver Social Outreach/Campaign

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3.1.1 Conduct baseline assessment in accordance with monitoring plan indicators
3.1.2 Implement social outreach/awareness campaign activities
3.1.3 Assess understanding and effectiveness of messaging amongst target audience
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

3.1.1 Conduct baseline assessment in accordance with monitoring plan indicators

A baseline assessment should be conducted before any activities take place as it provides a critical reference point for assessing changes and impact because of activities implemented. Note that this baseline assessment should be conducted once the intervention has been designed, although any animal welfare data collected during the preliminary assessment (step 1.1.1.) may be usable depending on the nature of the data collected and indicators and methods outlined in your monitoring plan. Typically, the process will be managed by your project team and involve communities to the extent feasible in accordance with your monitoring plan. Change Analysis – before and now (T11b) will aid this process.

3.1.2 Implement social outreach/awareness campaign activities

Think about the types of actors who can support and aid your SOC approach; can community members be active in the distribution of messaging? Participatory leadership can encourage participants’ commitment to the campaign, giving empowerment and ownership, which will support the sustainability of behaviour change being encouraged.

Things to consider for effective implementation (adapted from [77]):

• Engage with communities in ways that are most convenient for them.
• Be respectful, listen, and build trusting relationships.
• Make resources easily understandable in a format specific for your target audience
• Monitor, evaluate, and ask for feedback regularly.
• Expand your outreach gradually – begin with a population in a region/ zone that is the most comfortable and least challenging, and gradually expand out into populations that are less familiar and are more challenging. This gives the project opportunity to gain momentum and confidence and to benefit with feedback from an audience more willing or confident to give you constructive feedback for the project to develop and adapt where necessary.
• Choose the space where you conduct some outreach activities carefully – think about access for all people, always consider intersectionality as some spaces may make some sectors of your community feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, know your target audience, and ensure safeguarding measures are put in place as needed to ensure the safety of all involved with or engaged by the programme.

Throughout the SOC approach keep in mind the strategy and your implementation plans and refer to them at regular intervals. Update your implementation plan table (as described in section 2.2.2.) if you are using one, to monitor the progress of tasks, including milestones reached and RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status. Maintain the information flow within the project team (e.g. systematic briefings and debriefings before and after outreach events).

3.1.3 Assess understanding and effectiveness of messaging amongst target audience

Refer to your monitoring plans and conduct activities using identified methods and tools throughout the course of the project. To support engagement and to assess the effectiveness of messaging as you implement activities, it is important to create opportunities for interaction with and feedback from the target audience by keeping a continuous flow of informal consultation and feedback. This is important to ensuring the target audience feel heard and included, and that their values and culture are being respected and considered. In addition, it will enable the project to determine whether messaging is being received as intended and communicating effectively with target audience and reflects what they value [77]. Providing these opportunities for ongoing communication and feedback can avoid potential conflict or rejection of messages and desired change.

Consider using the Project Action Tracker to document key insights and actions for follow up that emerge from meetings or site visits where feasible to support refinement of your SOC approach as needed. Learning and monitoring of effectiveness of your activities is not only about understanding the positive changes, but also enables the nuanced things or the negative/relapse or resistance or backlash views and voices to be captured. Depending on the type and depth/strength of the resistance or backlash, it is always important to consider putting safeguarding measures/precautions in place for those who do the public outreach/public interface engagement, whether in face to face or online formats.

Reflection and learning sessions with the target audience, or representative target audience members, can help you identify when behaviours are not being adopted because of unanticipated barriers to adoption that are beyond the scope of the project to address. In such cases it might be necessary to change targets and identify new welfare issues and associated behaviours to change instead. Monitoring during implementation ensures all involved in the approach stay informed of activities, their outcomes, and the degree to which goals and objectives are being met, and to recognise new opportunities or risks that may affect outcomes. In addition, monitoring regularly gives the opportunity to adapt the approach considering new understandings in how your community is interacting with the messaging and information. However, ensure that any adaptations are thought out, and go back through the previous steps of this approach to ensure there are no unforeseen negative consequences to any changes being considered.

No matter how well planned your approach, be ready and create contingency plans for mitigating risks. Even with plans unexpected events may still upset scheduled activities.

If facing unexpected issues, you need to assess:

1. What happened? If possible, consult different community members or stakeholders to obtain a fuller picture. Listen carefully. Avoid directing blame.
2. Establish who may be affected.
3. Investigate what aspects of your SOC approach are affected.
4. Can the issue/s be resolved, how and by whom?
5. Analysis undertaken in earlier stages e.g. root cause analysis, influencer maps/rainbow diagram, and risk analysis, can be used to locate the issue and help identify possible options.
6. Decide what action needs to be taken and inform all relevant members as soon as possible to decide together what further actions must follow.
7. If actions fail to resolve the situation, assess whether the SOC approach can still reach its goal, if not you may need to consider the only other course of action, which is to exit.
8. This is a learning opportunity so record the experience and be prepared to share with others.

Link to References Cited