SBCC Summit 2016 CommTalks: Characteristics, Conceptualization and Methodologies of Revela2

This CommTalk took place at the First International SBCC (Social and Behaviour Change Communication) Summit in February 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The CommTalks at the Summit were 10-minute "TED Talk" like presentations that focused on experiences from the field, and presented an opportunity for organisations to share their innovations, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. In this recording of one of the CommTalks, Adelaida Trujillo, Director of Citurna Producciones/Imaginario, talks about

"Characteristics, Conceptualization and Methodologies of Revela2", a platform on sexual health and rights in Colombia that uses media, capacity building, impact evidence, and partnership to build advocacy for inclusion of Revelados' rights-based approach in national education policy.

Trujillo explains that she will be telling the story of Revelados, the Colombian television and social media platform on teen sexuality created as a rights-based, social change communication programme.  She structures her talk abound seven points, principles of communication for social change presented through anecdotes. Film clips of several types of programming, fiction and non-fiction, are presented as samples of the ongoing dialogue that the project intends to spark among adolescents and young people on sexuality and sexual health and rights. She explains the complicated sociodemographic in Colombia, including the effects of poverty, armed conflict, paramilitary presence, and drug trafficking.

The Revelados platform  deals with subjects including HIV, pregnancy prevention, and gay and abortion rights, among youth topics selected through local stakeholder dialogue.

The lessons learned Trujillo presents include:

• The central role of a civil society based organisation is working in partner ships with: the national government - the national Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education; the federal, the regional, the provincial administrations, and the local municipalities. Due to decentralisation of health planning, much has been done in partnership at the level of communities.
• Revelados was created not as a discrete programme but as a platform that could be flexible enough for adoption by sectors: education, health, youth, gender, child protection, post-conflict, etc.
• Content is created through dialogue with all constituencies, including youth organisations, ministries, media, and pubic media, resulting in a more collectivelt constructed content that is more robust and long term. [A sample video: is available here.]
• Work has a core research base so that there is credibility in public policy and evidence for adoption by ministries.
• The programme has built capacity in the universities at the national and regional level.
• They began with two entertainment models, Soul City and Puntos de Encuentro. They share with constituents information from, for example, The Communication Initiative, on good examples, research, evaluation, etc., to feed the sense of building something together, not re-inventing the wheel, and staying local in responding to cultural context.
• They unlocked community and youth engagement by inviting youth activists from 25 municipalities to become partners so that everyone can work on the processes of research, writing, production,  and evaluation, and then, as peer educators, use the products in their youth centres and schools, locally. The challenge of harnessing the digital content includes placing content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, a website, etc. and tracking its use and diffusion.

In summary, Trujillo lists: dialogue/debate, knowledge and voice, culture and context, information sharing, flexible platforms, and partnership building, including looking to legislative action. Co-creating and sharing a flexible platform as has allowed partners to take off in their directions, keeping the rights-based focus. An example: research shows impact on generating student dialogue and increasing knowledge, so the Ministry of Education is supporting an elearning/teaching curriculum based on Revelados as part of their public policy. She quotes the lead ministry official on how Revelados research has changed the Colombian government's policy from supporting an individual behavioural change approach to using a rights-based social change perspective and building the Revelados platform into the health curriculum in nationwide schools. Thus, the challenge for communicators is to go for structural change, to target public policy, and to build capacity.