Tag Archives: global citizen

Designing for Community Change

At the beginning of the month, Craig Lefebvre challenged us to 10 “What Ifs” for social marketing in the coming year. At the heart of Craig’s what ifs is a change in perspective in terms of approach. This shift is also reflected in the United States’ recently released Healthy People 2020 blueprint which is committed to improving the quality of our Nation’s health by producing a framework for public health prevention priorities and actions. Compared to Healthy People 2010, Healthy People 2020 includes:

  • Social determinants of health as a new topic area in the Healthy People 2020 framework, and
  • Determinants of Health are also one of the four new Foundation Health Measures which will be used as guides to monitor progress toward promoting health, preventing disease and disability, eliminating disparities, and improving quality of life in the United States.

One of the greatest ways that this shift is being applied in social marketing is by evolving the social marketing approach to influence systems, networks and environments. How? Through design–Let’s take a look at a couple examples.

Bertie County, North Carolina:  Teaching Design for Change

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiIxdFBA0Sw

Designer Emily Pilloton is truly inspiring in her approach, her commitment and personal dedication to finding innovative solutions and sustainable approaches to positive social change. Pilloton founded Project H Design, a non-profit design firm where they apply the design process to catalyze communities and public education from within. In the presentation above, Pilloton shares with us the story of Bertie County. The county is the poorest in the state and faces a number of public health challenges that other rural areas may relate to including being a “rural ghetto,” dealing with “brain drain,” and having little access to creative capital.

However, the picture in Bertie County is becoming more vibrant thanks to Pilloton and others working to change the system–the environment. Pilloton walks us through the six steps her firm has applied to make change come to Bertie County:

  1. Design through action.
  2. Design with, not for.
  3. Design systems, not stuff.
  4. Document, share and measure.
  5. Start locally and scale globally.
  6. Build.

In short, Poilloton and the Project H team “design solutions that empower communities and build collective creative capital.” They might not say “we do social marketing” up front–but to me, that’s exactly what they’re doing and we can learn much from them. They are doing the work and taking the type of approach that the shift described above calls for and requires. And shown in Bertie County, this may mean that we need to get our hands dirty, ignite creativity, make genuine connections with those we want to serve, and have a personal conviction to see change happen.

Howard Roads, Virginia:  Designing for Physical Activity

This example comes from Rescue Social Change Group (RSCG). RSCG is a research, marketing and strategy firm where they focus on the relationship between identity and behavior to change behavior through culture. In this specific case, RSCG worked with Howards Roads, Virginia to promote physical activity amongst youth. The reason this case stands out is because it didn’t take the ‘easy button’ approach of pushing “get active” or “exercise more” messages to tweens and teens. Instead, they went a step further and actually designed an environment to promote physical activity for youth. They accomplished this by creating a step dancing league called Step Royale where teams compete throughout the year to earn the title of the best step team in Hampton Roads.

From What Ifs to What Next

Given these two examples, here are three “What Ifs” to add to the list:

  • What if public health wasn’t just about the message but also about the design, the system, the network and the environment?
  • What if public health wasn’t just the responsibility of public health folks but resonated and took root in our communities?
  • What if we didn’t ask what if–but instead, asked what’s next?

I’m almost thinking of a Roosevelt-New-Deal-sense of shared responsibility and commitment. The global citizen can start with us and our neighbors–We can design change in our communities.

Disclaimer: Healthy People 2020 is an initiative by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services–of which, is a client that I work with at IQ Solutions.

What Would You Say? Thoughts on Global Citizenship

What would you say to world leaders if given the chance? This is the question the UN’s Citizen Ambassadors campaign asks us. The campaign is two years running and involves a video contest that “encourages world citizens to voice their opinions to Heads of State and Government and weigh in on the decisions made by the member states of the United Nations.”

According to the campaign Web site, the initiative is one in a series launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. The purpose? To utilize “the power of the Internet and social networking to engage a new generation of world citizens in the importance of international diplomacy.”  This is an inspiring charge–but in reality, could be quite difficult in achieving. So, let’s break this down.

The Power of the Internet and Social Networking

Over 825 million people use the Internet in Asia as of July 2010. In terms of population, Facebook would be the third largest country if it were a country given its 500 million active users. It’s also translated in over 70 languages. Six in ten Americans go online wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone. 86% of adults ages 18-29 use social networking.

Mobile giving raising over $30 million for Haiti relief efforts. Technology saving lives and enabling communication. Community-funded journalism fueled by the passion of citizen journalists and digital storytelling. Random Hacks of Kindness, Crisis Camps, Ushahidi, accessible health data and a slew of additional examples have some dubbing 2010 as “the year citizen platforms grew.” Why? Because of the power of the Internet and social networking in facilitating, connecting, empowering and enabling both individuals and communities to better serve a global mission.

Need I say more?

A New Generation of World Citizens

By now, you’ve probably heard about the “Millenials,” those born between 1981 and 2000 as defined by the Pew Research Center. Summed up, Pew identifies Millenials as “Confident. Connected. and Open to Change.” The UN is correct–there is a new generation of world citizens who want more, but I don’t think it’s limited to just Millenials. I think they are referred to as global citizens. Lovisa Williams in her post “Global Citizenship Building Momentum” defines global citizens as:

A Global Citizen is everyone whether they know it or not.  They don’t have to know the term or even the concepts associated with the term.  The bottom line is if you live on earth you are now part of an ecosystem that is larger than your village, your tribe, you town, state, province, or nation…Part of recognizing you are a Global Citizen is recognizing you have the world on your shoulders.  You have the responsibility to help advocate for those who don’t recognize they are Global Citizens and are also responsible for helping to provide solutions to these issues.

The concept of global citizenship faces its own challenges.  For example, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs may come to mind. If someone doesn’t have their basic needs met such as having food and shelter–is it too much to expect global citizenry? Some may say yes. But the potential of a network of people coming together over shared commonalities wanting to promote humanity–well, if we could achieve that, then just imagine the possibilities.

International Diplomacy

In August 2010, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton announced the State Department’s Global Health Initiative, working to improve global health as a way to achieve diplomacy:

I’d like to share with you the next chapter in America’s work in health worldwide. It’s called the Global Health Initiative, GHI for short, and it represents a new approach, informed by new thinking and aimed at a new goal: To save the greatest possible number of lives, both by increasing our existing health programs and by building upon them to help countries develop their own capacity to improve the health of their own people….

Global health is a prime example of how investing our resources strategically can have an immediate and lasting impact on people, communities, and countries.

There is too little coordination…

There is too little integration….

There is too little innovation…

Addressing global health is now a part of the U.S.’ International diplomacy efforts. An important step–is going to be figuring out how to enable and empower the global citizen to play a part in achieving better global health (diplomacy). Our world is growing–but it’s also shrinking. We are becoming more connected and more aware of the problems we face and the commonalities we share–how we funnel this awareness into action could make the difference.

When These Powers Combine

Combine innovation mixed with the rising call of global citizenship with the changes happening at the policy level–I dare to be optimistic in saying that change is going to come. The next step? How do we first define global citizenship, then operationalize and expand its mantra? There are glimpses of it–See the U.N. Foundation’s Girl Up! campaign or the State Department’s Civil Society 2.0 initative–but the concept can go wider and deeper.

So, what would I say to world leaders if given the chance? First, I’d ask them when was the last time they served the humblest members of their communities and what they learned from the experience. My hope would be that shared challenges would be identified and that the  conversation would turn from “What Would You Say?” to “What Would You Do?” And in that, a focus and discussion on global citizenship would take place.

I recently asked some fellow colleagues what they would say to world leaders if given the opportunity. And without any prompting from me–the discussion concluded with an assertion that gets to the heart of global citizenship–We are the world leaders:

So, What would you say to world leaders if given the chance? And if we are the world leaders, what does that mean?