Issues related to social and behavioral change have had important debates and changes in their approaches globally and significantly in the global south. These approaches have generated tensions because they involve technical and political aspects. At the global level, the transition of C4D, CFSC, SBCC approaches, and more recently, that of SBC can be reviewed in recent history. The deepening of this approach assumes, among other challenges, the contributions of applied Behavioral Sciences, greater consideration of the context to sustain behavioral changes, strengthening of systems and the provision of services, knowledge management, and the generation of evidence for decision-making. 

For its part, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been a pioneer in the generation of practices, reflections, and the production of knowledge in the fields of social mobilization, popular, community and citizen communication, communication pedagogy, understanding of cultural and political contexts, decolonial perspectives of communication, alternative visions to development such as good living, among others. However, few resources have been devoted to the systematization and visibility of these approaches and models, which have the potential to contribute to the global discussion around urgent social changes and demands. 

UNICEF has a long tradition of working in these fields, including systematic actions in Communication for Development (C4D), Risk Communication and Community Participation (RCCE), addressing Social Norms, work on Social Rumors and Disinformation, awareness processes and dissemination of information, among others. Specifically, the SBC team of the UNICEF Office for the Latin America and Caribbean region has an interest in generating spaces to strengthen critical reflection, knowledge exchange, and technical capacities for Social and Behavioral Change, in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Thus, this panel proposal has been built in alliance with Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla, Colombia) and the participation of LAC experts from academia, social organizations, UNICEF specialists, and implementing partners.

One of the purposes of this collective exercise is to establish a dialogue between the global perspectives of SBC and the traditions from LAC on communication and social change so that the latter are put on the global agenda and make it possible to generate adaptations that contribute to generate proposals for change from a more autonomous perspective and adapted to the cultural contexts and expectations of the region.