The Bernard Van Leer Foundation (BvLF) conducted a seven-day workshop in the first week of March 2021, for the newly established Project Management Unit (PMU) of the Urban95 Phase-II Programme in Udaipur, including technical personnel from ICLEI- South Asia and Ecorys India Pvt. Ltd. The workshop, held in collaboration with the US-based John Hopkins-Centre for Communication Programs (CCP), focused on the importance of social and behavioural change (SBC).

BvLF is the supporting-cum-funding partner of the Urban95 programme.

The two-part online workshop introduced the participants to the importance of behavioural change as a component of urban planning, execution and institutionalisation, and gave them an opportunity to enhance their understanding and knowledge of SBC, including concepts like behavioural economics and design thinking.

The first part of the workshop focused on SBC capacity strengthening, followed by deep-dive sessions in the second part on additional concepts. The highly interactive and participatory workshop was led by experts from John Hopkins University-CCP and was centred on mapping behaviour constraints and challenges. There was specific focus on user experiences, pre-testing of ideas and interventions, improving understanding and communication between service providers and families, and designing of frameworks that could focus on more collaborative interventions for children and their caregivers.

The officials who attended the workshop included Mr. Mahendra Samadani, Executive Engineer (EE), Udaipur Municipal Corporation (UMC) and Udaipur Smart City Ltd. (USCL); Mr. Karnesh Mathur, Assistant Engineer (AE), USCL; Mr. Dinesh Pancholi, AE, UMC;  Mr. Pramod Patel, Town Planning Assistant, Urban Improvement Trust (UIT); and Mr. Rahul Chanderia, AE, UIT.

Mr. Samadani said that “the biggest learning for him from the workshop was to understand how important it is to incorporate SBC ideas from the perspective of children and their caregivers in the projects they undertake in the city as engineers.”

Officials from the Pune Municipal Corporation, another Urban95 city, along with its PMU members, and technical personnel from the World Resources Institute, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and a few other organisations were also present.

Mrs. Uttara Bharat Kumar, Senior Advisor, Social Behaviour Change and Capacity- Strengthening, Johns Hopkins-CCP, said, “The SBC is a discipline that uses a deep understanding of human and social behaviour and evidence-based interventions to influence the social norms that affect positive behaviour by individuals.”