Publication:

SIGNIFICANCE OF TARGET POPULATION IN BEHAVIOUR CHANGE COMMUNICATION

The study explores communication strategies and message development in community-based behaviour change interventions in Zomba District. The study critiques roles of implementing organisations and target communities in implementation of the discovered portfolio of activities that includes peer education, counselling sessions, Stepping Stones, drama, poetry, motivational talks and print media. The study conjectures whether the approaches to implementation of the activities ascertain active involvement of the target people and dialogue-based approaches. This is guided by insights from theoretical framework of behaviour change communication and national policy and strategic guidelines for behaviour change interventions (BCI) and HIV communications. The ultimate lesson from this study is that best practice of behaviour change communication entails precedence of collaborative, interactive and dialogic approaches. The study detects poor interaction mechanism among intervening organizations and targeted people as implementing organizations marginalise ordinary community members in making and implementation of decisions regarding development of messages and delivery of communication methods. In the light of the theoretical overview, such a scenario compromises the effectiveness of the community-based interventions in motivating change in the community. vi The study also concludes that the community-based organizations (CBOs) lack established implementation guidelines for behaviour change communications (BCC) which could be significantly contributing to such a scenario. To this effect, the study suggests familiarization of stakeholders to available national guidelines to HIV/AIDS communications whose potential has been theoretically validated. Overall, the present study’s has managed to substantiate the linkage of communication variables to the trends of behaviour change and sets the rationale for further experimental study on the context communication approaches behaviour change status among the Malawian population.