When Communities Know Best: Failures in Localization and Co-Design

Efforts to localize Social and Behavior Change (SBC) often emphasize community participation as the pathway to ownership. In Ethiopia's Somali Region, under the Data Use Partnership (DUP), prototypes were co-created with health workers and local leaders to strengthen health data quality and use. While participatory workshops generated enthusiasm, several interventions faltered when participation failed to evolve into sustained ownership. Peer-recognition and feedback mechanisms, for instance, thrived during piloting but engagement declined once external facilitation ended.
This failure was revealing: it showed that community participation can be constrained by deeper barriers cultural hierarchy, informal decision-making, and dependency on external facilitators. Prior exposure to externally funded programs also shaped expectations around per diems and allowances, influencing perceptions of value and responsibility. As a result, co-design produced energy but not accountability, and interventions were not embedded into existing systems or leadership structures.
These lessons reshaped our approach. We now prioritize transition planning during design, embed interventions into institutional routines, and create Innovation Labs where communities and institutions co-develop sustainability strategies. Importantly, in contexts like the Somali Region, localization requires deliberate attention to cultural nuance designing for hierarchical endorsement, relationship-based decision-making, and gradual pacing.
By sharing these reflections, this session normalizes failure as a catalyst for innovation and offers practical guidance for practitioners. It highlights the shift from symbolic participation toward authentic ownership, institutionalization, and sustainable, community-led SBC solutions that can endure beyond external facilitation.

In rural areas of Nepal, safe water handling practises are poor with people not adhering to one or several of the steps defining safe water handling. Since the traditional health education approach through flipcharts had only little impact, the Nepal Red Cross conducted a behavioural assessment, eliciting the facilitators and barriers to safe water handling using the COM-B model by Michie and Stralen (2012). Based on the evidence from the doer and non-doer analyses, behaviour change actions were co-designed with the local community and rolled out with the help of Red Cross volunteers. Monitoring tools to document the behaviour change were created by the monitoring team.


When switching to behaviour change actions using new tools and techniques, volunteers had to undergo a behavior change themselves, which was underestimated by the project team. The volunteer training did not integrate the new tools and techniques and focused mainly on the monitoring tools. The practical training on the behaviour actions fell short, and feedback, ideas, concerns and challenges of volunteers were neither asked for nor addressed. Thus, the volunteers ended up using the monitoring tools as a behaviour change technique "coercion" and annoyed some households who felt overly controlled.
Preparing volunteers and behaviour change implementers well in the behaviour change techniques and following behaviour change actions, taking into account their own behaviour change process moving away from known tools, takes time and requires feedback loops and supportive supervision. A clear distinction of roles between implementing and monitoring is non-negotiable.

Based on our assessments in West Sumba and lessons from successful interventions in other regions, our program sought to address the district's persistently high stunting prevalence of 47% (2018). The assessment suggested that the problem stemmed from multiple, interrelated factors-including gaps in nutritional knowledge linked to the transition from traditional indigenous diets toward more processed foods rich in refined carbohydrates and fats. This dietary shift, combined with strong patriarchal norms that limit shared childcare responsibilities, appeared to exacerbate malnutrition and poor family health outcomes. We implemented a Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture approach that integrated agriculture, health promotion-including parenting classes, economic empowerment. The key to our success, however, was not the curriculum itself but the hard-won lessons in engagement.
Our most critical insight was that effective community engagement is a deliberate journey, not a simple switch. We learned to bridge the monologue-to-dialogue gap on two fronts. First, in content creation, we shifted from delivering finished manuals to presenting "monologue drafts" for parents to co-refine. Second, in facilitation, we started with a relatable mother's monologue-story as an icebreaker. This built the essential trust for meaningful and participatory conversations.
This dual shift to two-way conversation proved transformative. After six weeks of focused groups, it challenged entrenched gender roles and spurred greater paternal involvement. Over 90% of parents reported more patient childcare, and a significant majority of fathers became actively involved in feeding and health visits. Sustainable behavior change begins not with teaching, but with listening and co-creating.

MAGENTA's project sought to increase fathers' participation in school committees in community in southern Honduras, where 96% of members are women. Based on existing evidence and experience, MAGENTA initially believed men's involvement would ease women's workload and enhance child nutrition outcomes, and that the inclusion of fathers would be welcomed by the female members of the committees. Through focus groups with fathers and mothers, we explored the barriers stopping fathers from participating in the committees, the motivators that could help us with our strategy, and opportunities for engagement.


However, contrary to our initial assumptions, it was the mothers who did not want fathers participating. The School Committees were their safe spaces to lead and make decisions-a space where they could exercise authority in a context where such opportunities are limited. Including men to the committes risked dismantling this empowering environment.


This experience revealed a critical blind spot: equating participation with progress. By assuming that "help" from men was inherently positive, we overlooked women's perspectives on autonomy and leadership. Without subsequent learning, reflection and community engagement, our strategy would have caused harm rather than benefit.