New insights on commmunity-led communication

The Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA), known as Ifaa, aims to reduce poverty, vulnerability, and food insecurity across nine woredas in Oromia, Ethiopia. A key component of the project is Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC), which addresses cognitive, social, and structural determinants through multi-sectoral interventions in agriculture and livelihood, health and nutrition, WASH, community engagement and participation, natural resource management, and productive safety net systems. Over 120 SBCC materials-including videos, audios, posters, and job aids-were developed to engage communities. However, challenges related to sustainability, message repetition, and accessibility prompted the project to collaborate with local service providers (LSPs), including public and public-private radio stations, to repackage content into radio messages. This repacking process simplified complex messages, ensured cultural relevance, and increased reach, especially in rural areas with limited access to printed or digital media. Two LSPs, Fana FM Haromaya and EBC Harar, aired more than 14 repacked topics across all sectors, saving approximately $8,300 and enhancing community engagement. Partnership also fostered local ownership, with LSPs contributing free airtime and repackaging services. Lessons learned highlight the value of involving LSPs early in content design to avoid later repackaging and to promote sustainability. Community-led production and storytelling proved effective in fostering emotional connection and long-term behavior change. The initiative demonstrates localizing SBCC through trusted LSPs and participatory approaches enhances equity, effectiveness, and sustainability. Future programs are encouraged to integrate LSPs from the outset, enabling them to embed SBCC into their routine programming and corporate social responsibility efforts

The transition from institutional to family-based care in Ukraine is not only a policy reform - it is a social transformation that relies on trust, collaboration, and shared leadership. In Kharkiv region, this transformation was piloted through a human-centered communication initiative co-created with the Coordination Center for Family Upbringing and Childcare and local authorities – the counselling and advisory body at the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. 
Rather than speaking about families and children, the campaign was built with them. It sought to replace narratives of pity with those of dignity, reciprocity, and strength, showing families as agents of change. The process emphasized localization in action – engaging regional institutions, community voices, and service providers to ensure messages and systems worked in harmony. 
Central to the effort was the creation of a sub-national hotline, a tool of relational communication that enabled personalized, trust-based dialogue between potential parents and child affairs specialists. The hotline became both a symbol and a system of accountability, bridging people and services through empathy and responsiveness. 
Results in Kharkiv – and later across six additional regions – showed tangible impact: over 2,500 calls, 423 trained and registered caregivers, and 836 children welcomed into families. More importantly, the intervention demonstrated that when communication is co-created, trust-centered, and grounded in human experience, it becomes a catalyst for systems change – turning shared stories into collective action for every child's right to a family. 

The U-Report Communities of Action (CoA) model represents a shift in SBCC, moving beyond centralised message dissemination to engaging and co-creating with young people as the owners and designers of interventions. This initiative is an example of localisation in action, leveraging the U-Report platform to empower young people to manage the full SBC implementation process for nutrition, elimination of harmful social norms and public health gains like HPV and Polio vaccination uptake. To date, the model has been established across 18 districts, engaging approximately 1,200 trained adolescent and youth leaders and reaching an estimated 360,000 community members through peer-led mobilisation and dialogue. CoA members conduct community rapid assessments, co-create Human-Centered Design (HCD) solutions, and lead community mobilisation interventions, constantly adapting strategies based on real-time feedback. This decentralised model formalises shared leadership and reciprocal accountability, using its data collection system not to enforce compliance, but to track community intelligence. The CoA model thus transforms community members from mere recipients of SBCC interventions into active designers and reliable partners, ensuring interventions are relevant, agile, and ultimately, owned by the communities they serve, thereby strengthening connection and relationships.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) hear questions, concerns, and stories that reflect how communities experience health and social services. These insights are rarely documented in a way that can inform health and social programs and policy. This project piloted a data collection toolkit that introduced field infodemiology into the work of CHWs in New York City. 
The toolkit was developed through co-creation workshops where CHWs identified methods that were realistic for their workflows. The final model combined weekly structured microsurveys on Microsoft Teams with monthly group reflections. CHWs recorded client questions, barriers, and enablers, and then reviewed the themes together. 
The process produced insights reports that described recurring challenges such as confusion about benefits, unclear eligibility rules, and long wait times for referrals. The reports also highlighted enablers including trusted CHW-client relationships and co-located services. The approach created a systematic way to capture frontline experience and connect it to service improvement. 
The toolkit showed that CHWs can contribute structured evidence about service experience while they work with clients. It represents a first step in integrating field infodemiology into local service delivery, providing timely, practice-based knowledge that helps programs and policies respond to community needs.