Oops to Impact: How Failed Plans Became Better Programs

UNICEF Indonesia has prioritized meaningful participation opportunities for young people, launching Mitra Muda in 2021. In two batches, more than 100 young leaders bring innovation advocating child's rights and come up with concrete plans to implement ideas. It is our role as UNICEF to support and empower young people to implement their proposed solutions.
However, sustaining engagement proved challenging. As youth progressed through school, university, or early careers, personal priorities shifted; Voluntary commitments became harder to maintain, and individual efforts produced limited multiplier effects.
These experiences highlighted opportunities to strengthen youth engagement through more structured partnerships. Although the open recruitment for Mitra Muda paused this year, UNICEF pivoted to working with youth-led organizations. Currently, UNICEF has worked with 18 youth-led organisations from 12 cities selected through open calls for proposals. The representatives join in capacity building and conduct community engagements. The impacts multiplied as they reached 33 cities, beyond their own areas due to organisations' branches and networks. UNICEF's supports include mentoring, seed-funding, as well as creating enabling environments; For example, in training workshops, youth are now joined by teachers, health promoters, and community leaders; They are the enablers who connect youth with real opportunities to apply their skills. This approach allows young people to contribute meaningfully without needing to act alone, tapping into existing community needs. 
By shifting from individual engagement to organizational cooperation, UNICEF has transformed short-term enthusiasm into lasting, collective impact, demonstrating that youth-led change thrives when supported by systems, mentorship, and strategic partnerships. 

This paper examines the methodological challenges of evaluating the #Invaluables campaign in Bengaluru - a social and behaviour change intervention aimed at shifting how waste pickers are perceived by the citizens. The intervention used innovative media formats to raise awareness about the role of informal waste pickers in supporting the city, while also seeking to shift negative stereotypes against them. Given this objective, the impact evaluation was particularly complex, as it required measuring abstract and intangible concepts such as empathy, dignity and respect shown towards waste pickers. 
Central to the evaluation design was a longitudinal panel of over 1,900 social media users, tracked across four waves over 18-month period. It was a rigorous quasi-experimental impact evaluation with a baseline survey before the intervention started, and monitoring surveys post each campaign to track changes between "exposed" and "unexposed" audiences. Several operational realities complicated this design – 
Firstly, in a hyperconnected digital ecosystem, maintaining a "pure" control group proved virtually impossible, as participants were often exposed to our high-decibel campaign High rates of attrition necessitated the continual replacement of participants, thereby weakening the longitudinal integrity of the panel. Challenges in assessing abstract concepts like empathy, dignity, and respect towards waste pickers To address these limitations, we used rigorousness analysis methods to approximate counterfactuals. What worked for us was methodological pluralism: combining quantitative tracking with ethnographic inquiry, adopting hybrid evaluation designs, and openly acknowledging the limitations of experimental purity when applied to social and behaviour change communication.

Edutainment to prevent domestic abuse or intimate partner violence (IPV) is an emerging field. A recent meta-review (Peterman, 2025) shows that it can be effective in about 60 percent of evaluated interventions. Many successful studies have relied on realistic and sometimes graphic depictions of violence to raise awareness and convey urgency. However, evidence from our work in Rwanda suggests that this conventional approach can have unintended effects, particularly when audiences include a high proportion of survivors.
This presentation reflects on the design and testing of Twubakane, a six-episode radio drama produced to prevent IPV and promote shared decision-making within couples. The evaluation found a strong overall impact: 90 percent of participants reported improved communication and more equitable relationships, and the series reached more than 27,000 listeners.
Yet qualitative findings revealed a subtle but meaningful problem. While most women found the drama inspiring, a few internalized the message of "endurance" rather than empowerment. Two participants described sadness when the main female character tolerated repeated humiliation before change occurred. Observation notes mentioned lowered heads and sighs during those scenes. These "adverse reflections" suggested that, although the drama was emotionally safe, it reinforced norms of women's patience as a moral strength.
This experience led to rewriting Season 2 to make violence implicit and portray women actively negotiating change rather than waiting for men to transform. The presentation explores the implications for balancing realism, safety, and transformation in IPV edutainment.

La estrategia "Cambiemos la Ficha" del UNFPA, en el marco de la iniciativa "Fabricando Sueños", redefine la promoción de masculinidades positivas llevándola a un espacio de alta resonancia cultural en la República Dominicana: el juego de dominó. En lugar de ser un taller abstracto, la estrategia se materializa a través del Torneo de Dominó "Cambiemos la Ficha", convirtiendo una actividad de ocio popular en una poderosa plataforma para el diálogo y la transformación social.
El objetivo es cambiar la narrativa desde adentro. Mientras los hombres comparten un juego, se introducen conversaciones y dinámicas que los invitan a "cambiar la ficha" en sus actitudes sobre la violencia, la paternidad responsable, la corresponsabilidad en el hogar y el respeto a la igualdad. Se aprovecha la camaradería y la confianza del entorno para cuestionar de manera constructiva los estereotipos del machismo.
De este modo, "Fabricando Sueños" no solo organiza un torneo, sino que crea un espacio seguro donde los hombres pueden reflexionar sobre su rol sin sentirse atacados. La estrategia transforma el juego en una herramienta práctica para construir masculinidades más sanas, demostrando que el compromiso con la igualdad de género puede y debe nacer en los espacios cotidianos de la comunidad.