Change Begins With Us

After I took a Health and Behaviour change class in University, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the main concepts of social and behaviour change. Coming to this learning lab I thought I had a pretty good foundation and that this was a good way to build on that. However, just as we are learning in the class, every scenario and every situation is different and so is the solution to every ‘problem’ – in that way there will always be a lot to learn when it comes to facilitating social change. I really like the way the workshop is constructed because of the emphasis on examples, images and games and not just lectures and theories.

Today's session was especially interesting to me because we saw examples of how kids are creating change. Working in development, I always hear the word "resources" a lot, "we need more resources", "we dont have enough resources".There is a big emphasis on how many resources projects will need or consume. However, when I see these videos it is abundantly clear that you do not need ample resources and expensive interventions to create meaningful change, and more often than not it is just a little shift in thoughts and perspectives that can be really influential. So how do we gear our work towards initiating those little shifts? How do we redirect our efforts into investing in human capital? I think this is difficult because the investment and dedication that needs to be put behind facilitating the kind of change we want is exponentially harder and more time consuming, and takes a different level of dedication on our part. As we have discussed many times today, we have to live and breathe the values for our efforts to be as effective as we would like. We are constantly learning, and generations and norms are constantly changing. I believe we will learn most through our own experiences and interactions once we start consciously incorporating C4D in our work.

I will end with a quote from Albert Einstein that I feel does a good job of illustrating how I feel about the work I do and the work I want to do:

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking." - Albert Einstein -