Udaipur : Udaipur Municipal Corporation (UMC) and City Officials received training on aspects of Social and Behavior Change (SBC) from lens of young children and their families. The workshop series was designed by John Hopkins-Centre for Communication Programs and supported by Bernard van Leer Foundation, an independent foundation working towards early childhood development. The aim of this initiative was to support city officials in incorporating behaviour change into the design, planning, and management of projects and programmes from the lens of 0-5-year-old children, under the global Urban95 initiative.
The capacity strengthening workshop was conducted virtually over a period of four weeks with 3-hour weekly sessions. The participants were introduced to Urban95 program, a multiyear initiative between the Udaipur Municipal Corporation and the Netherland-based Bernard van Leer Foundation focused on incorporating the lens of young children and their families in city planning and design. This was followed by four deep dive sessions on relevant SBC concepts – Human centred design, gender and SBC and monitoring and evaluation methods and tools. These sessions will sharpen participants’ understanding of SBC taking them one step ahead from the basics and provide them necessary tools to apply in their area of work.
The workshop sessions were interactive and engaging, where participants could focus on the behavioral challenges vis-à-vis their respective city level interventions, share their experiences and learn from the course directors as well as other participants.
It was attended by UMC officials including Mahendra Samdani – Executive Engineer, UMC & of Udaipur Smart City Ltd. (USCL), Karnesh Mathur –Assistant Engineer, UMC & of Udaipur Smart City Ltd. (USCL), Dinesh Pancholi, Assistant Engineer, UMC, Pramod Patel – Town Planning Assistant, UIT, Rahul Chanderia, Assistant Engineer, UIT and PMU
Sharing his thoughts on the workshop, Mr. Mahendra Samdani, Executive Engineer- Udaipur Municipal Corporation and Udaipur Smart City Ltd said, “This workshop was greatly beneficial for us. Understanding, evaluating the behavior of the community prior to technical implementation of the project was important. It was fun to “deep-dive” into the whole process. I think this will go a long way in bringing the local community together before undertaking any civil or technical project. It will also enable the community, especially the caregivers of young children, to take full advantage of these projects. We will be able to make full use of these processes while implementing in the projects of smart city. Thanks to the Urban95 team, who made us part of this workshop. We would definitely like to be a part of workshops in the future.”
Ms. Uttara Bharat Kumar, Senior Social and Behavior Change and Capacity Strengthening Advisor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Program (CCP) said, “SBC is a discipline that uses a deep understanding of human and societal behavior to create evidence-informed interventions. These interventions positively influence individual behaviors and their underlying social norms.”
Ms. Rushda Majeed, India Representative, Bernard van Leer Foundation noted, “We are very glad that city officials participated in the technical course in order to apply concepts of behaviour change into their work under Urban95 Udaipur. We hope to continue to strengthen our partnership with the city through such learning experiences as well their application on-the-ground in the city, in order to benefit young children and their caregivers.”