The ABCs of SBC

SBC in Community System Strengthening

• UNICEF SBC • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Sudan is living through war and mass displacement. Yemen faces one of the world’s longest-running humanitarian crises. And in Moldova, far from active conflict but still grappling with inequality, Roma communities remain excluded from the very systems meant to serve them. Across these vastly different contexts, one question emerges: how do communities themselves step in to sustain and shape the systems around them?

In this episode, host Qali Id speaks with UNICEF SBC specialists from Sudan, Yemen, and Moldova to explore the unexpected power of trust, local leadership, and cultural respect in strengthening systems. From youth-run resistance committees, to volunteer health networks, to trusted Roma leaders bridging gaps in access, this conversation highlights how Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) enables communities not just to survive—but to lead the way toward more inclusive and resilient futures.

You'll hear from:

  • Maha Abasher Khalid Osman, SBC Specialist at UNICEF Sudan
  • Cristina Stratulat, SBC Officer at UNICEF Moldova
  •  Abdullah Alshehari, SBC Specialist at UNICEF Yemen

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The views and opinions expressed by the contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of UNICEF or any entities they represent. The content here is for information purposes only.

The ABCs of SBC is hosted by Qali Id and produced and developed by Helena Ballester Bon in partnership with Common Thread.

Check out UNICEF’s latest publication on Social and Behaviour Change, Why don’t you just behave! For more information about UNICEF SBC, check out the programme guidance.

We care about what you think — you can share your thoughts on the podcast using this feedback form. For all other inquiries, please contact sbc@unicef.org.

Maha:

 It's basically not safe for anyone in any place, all over Sudan. There is a big economic crisis poverty. Different disease outbreak is going on. There is cholera, dunk, fever malaria. You can name it. So it's difficult to everyone and specifically the children.  

It's a country of emergency basically. So there is a seasonal flood. There was the revolution before that. There was the coup . So I think the Sudanese people, they get used to building their resilience and building kind of their own system.

You have to be creative.

Qali:
Welcome to the ABCs of SBC. A UNICEF podcast where we explore how community engagement and social and behavior change SBC can help us confront some of the most urgent and complex issues facing children today. I'm your host and in this episode we're diving back into community system strengthening when communities come together to build their own safety nets, restore trust where institutions have failed and lead the way in shaping services that truly reflect their needs.

Join us as we unpack Sudan's ongoing humanitarian catastrophe with Maha Abba Oman, SBC specialist at UNICEF Sudan Yemen's protracted emergency with Abdullah Abdurahman, SBC specialist at unicef, Yemen Moldova's Roma community, and their access to services with Christina Raat Social and Behavior Change officer at UNICEF Moldova to reveal the unexpected power of trust, local leadership and adaptability.

Through their stories, we'll explore s BBC's role to help communities lead, sustain, and rebuild the systems that support them three different contexts. One core challenge. How can SB, C create lasting impact even when everything else is in flux? If these ideas are new to you. Start with episode five, where we spoke to Vincent Petit, global lead of SBC for unicef, about the role of SBC in system strengthening, or episode 11 on community delivery partnerships.

We'll put the links in the show notes. Let's return to Maha Abba Osman SBC specialist at UNICEF Sudan, who we heard at the beginning of the episode. Tell me how have community systems even worked while in a constant state of uncertainty and emergency.

Maha:
It's a dynamic and changing environment.

Every day there is. Different context, different situation because the war is still ongoing. It's almost now more than two years.

I think the Sudanese people, they get used to building their resilience and building kind of their own system.

 Qali:
Sudan currently faces many compounding crises.

There are currently 30 million people requiring humanitarian assistance. The highest number ever recorded on top of this, 13 million people are internally displaced. There is widespread and increasing famine, and 90% of children are out of school. So the resilience is incredible. But for you as an SBC specialist, how do you adapt to such a fast changing, decentralized situation?

Maha:
You have to be innovative in each state. It's not constant kind of a structure you're gonna have or see in different state, different kind of community structure or system strengthening that is working for them.


Sometime I think at the time of the evolution in Sudan, within the revolution there was a lot of like community groups or youth group.  They formulate something they call the resistant committee, so it's group of youth organizing their communities services.  Everyone in this committee, they have a specific role. One is responsible for the gas, one is responsible for checking on the water. It's like a small government within the community.

 And I think after the war. This experience has also been transferred. That's people gather within their community, they formulate this community committee.

They try to organize themself, try to find solution for whatever service that they need and work together basically. So I think the same experience had been repeated.

Qali:
It's inspiring to hear about how communities step up in the face of hardship and the collapse of public services. That spirit of self-organization is echoed thousands of kilometers away in Yemen, years of conflict have damaged yemen's health education and warton sanitation systems.

And as of 2025, approximately 19.5 million people require humanitarian assistance. This has led to limited access to services, cholera outbreaks, and low immunization community networks have stepped up to fill the gaps. Abdullah Abdurahman, an SBC specialist from unicef, Yemen country office reflects on the community response 

Abullah:
 Here, day-to-day is a struggle.

It's a mother walking hours to find a medicine that might not exist. A father doing everything he can just to bring home one meal a day, and a child who has never known what peace feels like.

That's the reality for most people in Yemen, unfortunately years of conflict have divided the country between different governments and authorities in the north and in the south. But this goes far beyond politics. What we are seeing is a deep and ongoing humanitarian crisis.

It was clear to us that directly engaging families and helping them adopt life safe and practices especially cholera prevention practices was critical. But reaching families in their homes presented a major challenge due to cultural sensitivities as well as security concerns regarding strangers entering homes.

Based on formative of research and in partnership with the government, the SBC team developed and implemented a nationwide strategy to build a network  of female volunteers because evidence showed that women are culturally accepted to visit other women in their homes, especially when when discussing hygiene and health topics. 

SBC also supported the creation of mother to mother clubs, which provided safe spaces for pregnant women and mothers of young children to meet learn and support each other. This network later expanded to include other community resources like male religious leaders to raise awareness in mosques markets and community meetings.

We also leverage teachers along with the student and adolescent clubs who empower adolescents as agents of change among their peers and families. Other key structures we leveraged are community health workers. Medical doctors are midwives because health professionals are highly trusted sources of information in their communities. So those health professionals received training on r tracking and responding to misinformation and misconception on vaccines and immunization overall.

Qali:
Amazing work. I imagine given the team started with community systems, structures, and existing social norms, that these efforts are likely to be more resilient to shock 

Abdullah:
 What makes this strategy sustainable is that local gatherers, like volunteers, religious leaders, teachers, health workers, and even media professionals continue to raise awareness and support their communities as part of their daily lives, often without direct support from unicef.

Qali:
This what makes the impact lasts. They developed their own mechanisms, their own ways to survive and to collaborate to support each other. 

But approaches like this aren't unique to systems in flux or peril.

Sometimes the service is available, accessible, and affordable, but not everyone accesses it. Why? I spoke to Christina in Moldova to hear about a group often left behind by formal systems, Roma communities.

Cristina:
Roma communities are predominantly located in rural areas where they face high levels of poverty and unemployment. Deep rooted social norms and negative stereotypes in society contribute to their marginalization and exclusion from mainstream society.

Many Roma choose to not report their ethnicity out of fear of discrimination, which further deserves data and limit their representation in policy decisions. Services are usually not adopted to their needs or way of life, or to their local context or to their cultural beliefs. During a conversation with a group of Roma mothers in one of the district, Ry district it became clear that one of the biggest barriers they faced was the lack of trust. Many of the Roma mothers or Roma families, they had never had a direct conversation with a healthcare worker or a community leader they truly trusted. They were deeply influenced by the misinformation circulating on social media. And this communication gap continue to fuel exclusion and missed opportunities for real engagement with the most vulnerable groups.


Even when services are technically available, marginalized groups like Roma, communities in Moldova can remain excluded if those systems don't adapt to their realities, respect their culture, and engage them with empathy.

Qali:
True community system strengthening means bridging communication gaps, countering harmful stereotypes, and creating spaces where people feel seen. Heard and safe to participate. Moldova is the second poorest country in Europe and its location and shared border with Ukraine has meant a new phase of challenges facing its most vulnerable people.

Despite its small size, it's one of the largest recipients of Ukrainian refugees per capita in the world, putting pressure on already stretched systems.

Cristina:
After the start of the crisis in Ukraine when the many refugee families came in Moldova, including Roma refugee families, they faced significant challenges integrating into National Moldova system. It's important to highlight that the childhood immunization is free and mandatory for the school and the kindergarten enrollment.

So all the children who should be integrated in the school or kindergarten should be vaccinated. So when the Roma refugee families came in the country the problem was that they didn't have. For all the vaccines in order to be integrated in the schools. And then during our community engagement campaign, we visited , an accommodation center where the Roma families were leaving.

They were refusing to complete this mandatory vaccines to enroll the child in the local schools. The trust was low and the Roma families remained hesitant to vaccinate their children in Moldova.

Qali:

So how did you tackle this shifting reality?


Cristina:

What is unique in their communities that they have leaders which they trust and their name is Baron. This informal community leader holds significant trust in our authority within the Roma community. 

We engaged with the Roma Community Mediator in order to encourage the Roma families to vaccinate their children. And what they did, they formed like a joint team. And together they contacted the Baron in Ukraine and asked for his support . And after the Baron encourage the families to proceed with vaccination in Moldova, all the families from that accommodation centers vaccinated their children and integrated them in the local schools.

And this moment showed how this important coordination across sectors and across borders, even combined with cultural respect and behavioral insight can break through barriers and lead to real impact

Qali:
System resilience is flexible. It comes from coordination across sectors, across cultures, and in this case, across borders. This is particularly important today, globally. People are increasingly on the move, displaced from their homes to seek refuge in unfamiliar places.

I turned back to Maha in Sudan to hear about how SBC and community system strengthening builds resilience despite significant internal displacement of Sudanese families. 

Maha:
For example, from tu when the attack happened in tu, people moved to Jazeera. So people reestablishing Jazeera try distribute the resource for different other step that people are moving to and have big displacement. You have to adapt.

After that Jazeera have been taken, so people move to another place. We have also to move with them to another place and try to establish whatever network that is available to do the same and reallocate the resources as well. So it's changing adaptive forces. Whenever you have something new, you have to adapt it.

So social behavior change within the emergency and within context, like Sudan, it's actually the most needed function from my perspective we need to understand what, drive people, why people do what they do. Because of all the kind of shocks emotions what lead them to do different thing.

If you look at like the long term. You will see the value of the social behavior change and how you want to , support this community to be sustained, not just providing the service for them at the time of the crisis.

Next time, maybe you don't have even the ability to provide this services to them. So it's better from the beginning that you address the main causes of the issue. That's include the people their value, their norms their behavior, their emotion, their situation, et cetera.

There is an example of like an Arabic or Sudanese example that say learn me how. Learn me how? Don't give me a fish. Learn me how to fishing basically. So it's, I think it's the same thing for the social behavior change.

Qali:
That's clear. Supporting people on the move means adapting your support, working with local communities, and even in an emergency, looking beyond the response to their long-term welfare.


But to use the fishing analogy, what happens when people don't know ?

Maha:
At the beginning of the war I think that's one of the craziest time in Sudan and of the saddest time of the Sudan because it's not only about the, just the displacement and people moving from one place, but also the communication , was totally co disconnected. There was, targeting for the, all the communication channel.

So it's basically all people were offline. Even a phone call you weren't able to make it. So it was a time of panic.  so I think that time it was basically relying on Sudanese people. But at the same time, I think what we were able to do is just try to work within what we have within the community and, like everyone you have to be in the location to be able to serve the children.

People step up to, to establish their own arrangement within the community. Addressing different need, trying to communicating with whatever partner that providing service in the ground. And we were trying to integrate with that kind of service delivery.  For us, it was more tight time of SBC work because you have to be on the ground. You have to have someone physical who would be able to support and mobilize whatever networks that is available.

Qali:
So when systems are down, degraded or destroyed, SBC has to be nimble, even when basic communication is unavailable. SBC helps mobilize partners and tools to share messages and engage with communities based on existing channels of trust and influence.

Understanding what drives people to engage or resist, and when it's necessary to adapt to changing circumstances. In Yemen, their network of more than 25,000 volunteers, many of whom are women, have managed to reach almost every household in the country. But what motivates so many volunteers to step up in a time of crisis?

Let's hear from Abdullah.

Abdullah:

 In contexts like Yemen, volunteering offers a sense of purpose and structure when other formal opportunities are scared. So it becomes a part of, the volunteers' daily life and identity. For many volunteers here the motive is the desire to help their neighbors and improve their community's wellbeing.

They feel a strong sense of social responsibility, especially in terms of crisis. They want to be part of the solution. Some volunteers are driven by personal experiences having seen the impact of illness firsthand. They feel compelled to to prevent it for others.

Actually this multifaceted strategy was effective. SBC community structures enabled UNICEF to reach nearly every household in Yemen over the years through vaccination campaigns, outbreak responses and various community engagement efforts the efforts of these community structures contributed to a sharp decline in clear cases as well as, increased vaccination rates in many areas and increased the adoption of key health and nutrition practices.

Qali:
The impact of this intrinsic motivation, driving local ownership is a powerful reminder that whether a system is in crisis or is well established, handing over leadership to trusted community members just make sense. But as Abdullah later pointed out in context like Yemen, where systems barely exist, SBC is no magic bullet. 


As effective as SBC can be, it can't work in isolation.

Without concurrent improvements to water, sanitation and healthcare services communities will inevitably struggle to adopt and maintain the promoted practices regardless of how compelling the SBC approaches are.

Because behavior change isn't just about information or motivation. It's about whether people have the means to act in fragile settings. It takes more than messages without say water, working clinics or reliable support. Even the most trusted voices can only go so far.

And as we'll hear from Christina and Moldova, even in functioning systems, ensuring diverse voices have a seat at the table is crucial to ensure no one and no child is left behind.   

Cristina:

Building trust through consistent respectful engagement and ensuring that communities have real ownership over solutions and working across sectors to address complex needs. These are the foundational in any settings, in fragile context where people often feel invisible or unheard. Empowering, empowering local leaders and embed equity into system can be the  difference between temporary relief and long-term resilience.


Qali:
Even in the most fragile of context when clinics are shuttered, roads, impassable, and trust in public systems stretched to the limit communities find ways to lead from youth run resistance committees in Sudan to Roma, Barron's bridging cross-border vaccination gaps in Moldova to volunteer networks in Yemen reaching their neighbors one doorstep at a time.

What these stories share is not just hardship. They show us what's possible when people are trusted, respected, and supported to act even when, or maybe especially when security and meeting your basic needs are a daily struggle.

Thank you for listening to the ABCs of SBC, and especially to our guests, Maha, Christina, and Abdullah, for sharing their time, expertise, and advice.

Don't forget to listen to episode five on system strengthening and episode 11 on community delivery partnerships. If you want to dig in even more, we'll link them in the show notes. Lastly, if you enjoyed today's episode, please join the other five star reviews and share this episode with your friends and colleagues. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.

Until next time, I'm Qali Id.