SOCIAL MOBILIZATION

Social mobilization is the process of bringing together all societal and personal influences to raise awareness of and
demand for health care, assist in the delivery of resources and services, and cultivate sustainable individual and
community involvement. Social mobilization has promoted inter-sector consensus-building around community
health issues, especially those related to maternal and child health. The promotion of the participation of
representatives from various organizations via the community IMCI social-actor methodology has led to increased
civic cooperation.
How can we achieve social mobilization? 
Agenda 2030 requires a new way of working, harnessing the considerable synergies across goals. The ambitious and
broad scope of Agenda 2030 will only be achieved by bringing together a range of stakeholders, as envisioned in
Goal 17. 
Social mobilization is the backbone for strengthening this global partnership and ensuring that it remains
accountable to people’s overlapping needs and demands, whether in health, gender equality, labor or otherwise.
Examples of roles for stakeholders in ensuring that strategic alliances are formed to advance the SDGs, by
leveraging health promotion, include: 
Government 

 Expand space for civil society engagement in decision-making, taking necessary precautions to protect against
the efforts of industry-backed front groups to interfere with healthy public policy making. 

Civil society 

 Explore opportunities and innovative means to build cross-constituency partnerships for overlapping injustices
and common causes, with an emphasis on south-south and triangular cooperation amongst CSOs. 

Media (including social media) 

 Work with civil society to ensure that governments are committed to do as they have stated. Media platforms
both new and old can be used to engage a wide population on decision-making processes related to health and
sustainable development.

Organizations of the UN system 

Support the development of win-win policies and programmes to scale up advocacy and community mobilization for
health and the SDGs, engaging as appropriate with media and civil society. 
Community leaders 

 Mobilize affected communities and constituencies to respond to health and development injustices, supporting
their capacity to push back and organize, and build cross-cutting capacities within change agents. 

Research and academic institutions 

 Develop and improve methods to evaluate social mobilization using an evidence-based approach as both a
process and an outcome. Valid and reliable tools are especially needed to measure the (often complex) social
and organizational aspects of social mobilization as these pertain to a range of SDGs. 
Moving forward 

 As we scale up efforts to implement Agenda 2030, we are by no means starting from scratch. The SDGs are a
major opportunity to bring together and build upon the range of experiences and successes that have already
accrued – whether in access to medicines, climate change action, tearing down discriminatory laws or
addressing inequities more broadly.

People Empowerment - identifies the six steps that should be followed in the planning, initiating, and evaluating of
a community initiative to extend and strengthen empowerment. 
The steps are as follows: 

 Define and communicate the meaning of empowerment to every member of the organizations. 
 Set goals and strategies that become the organizing framework for people at every organizational level as they
undertake their own efforts to extend and strengthen empowerment 
 Train - people to fulfill their new roles and perform their functions in ways that are consistent with the company
goals for extending and strengthening empowerment. 
 Adjust the organization structure - so that it demands lean management, reduces bureaucracy, and forces the
creation of greater autonomy and freedom to act. 
 Adjust the organization system - to support the empowerment of people 
 Evaluate and improve - the process of empowerment by measuring improvement and the perceptions of the
organization members. 

Roots of empowerment - is a proven concept which is being used to improve the way organization use people. It is,
of course, an idea which has its roots in earlier organizational development theories and strategies. 

 Business and industry use only a fraction of the mental resource represented in their people
 Control is not only the best way to achieve organizational goals and it is an impossible way to achieve superior
performance and continuous improvement. 
 Competence is not a private preserver of a few experts. Competence is widely diffused in an organizational at
all levels 
 People have greater personal ownership and demonstrate greater responsibility for that over which they have
influence and which they experienced.

Strategies of social Mobilization encourages beneficiaries and other stake.

 Participatory holders to participate in the whole process of development from research planning down to
monitoring and evaluation. 
 Segmented - the stakeholders are classified into specific target groups and use need-based messages designed to
reach the groups. 
 Empowered - the beneficiaries are empowered to make their own plans and make their own decisions at their
own. 
 Decentralized - are given enough autonomy to plan and implement their own decisions at their own. 
 Comprehensive - several concepts which were used separately for years, due to academic compartmentalization
are now pieced together as a component of a comprehensive framework. 
 Action -oriented the new strategy which starts with communication finally ends up into social action. This
action is designed to meet certain social objectives and impact.

Community Organizing Principles 

 Trust in the people in their capacity to change and develop 

 Starts where the people are, in terms of their nee, resources and capabilities. 
 Community organizing should be based on the interest of the poor and the devastated. 
 Community organizing should result in the people working for a self-reliant community and society. 
 In working with the people, the majority rules but the minority should be respected. 
 Community organizing should be gender sensitive. 

Principles of Effective Networking 

 Access - Ideally all the network members should have access to The network members should be encouraged to
- the resources of the network. 
 Participation participate in all network-initiated activities to encourage them to work as a team. 
 Common Frame of Reference - Teamwork can only be realized if the members have a common understanding
of the problem at hand, or they should have common goals and conviction to solve the said problem 
 Shared Communication - Common frame of reference is brought about and maintained by shared
communication, which is necessary for decision-making processes.
 Shared Leadership and Followership - Mutual respect the members is one of the vital ingredients for the group
to sustain its goals and objectives. 
 Coordination - is the very first step towards successful networking. Synchronization and collective actions
cannot be achieved without coordination. 
 Interdependence Nobody is indispensable every members is unique and has own talents to be contributed to the
success of the group. 
 Complementary – Stresses the network members need to reinforce each other effort in work situations 
 Problem- Solving Capability - Every network should be capable and skilled at problem-solving.