The Challenge

Faith-based leaders play a pivotal role in shaping values, attitudes, and behaviours within communities in Iraq.

UNICEF considers faith-based leaders to be very strong partners. Their engagement is crucial in dispelling misinformation, promoting protection and child rights, and ensuring continuity of essential health, nutrition, and education services.

UNICEF Iraq andMAGENTA partnered in 2023 to develop an SBC-CE toolkit to engage religious leaders in disseminating key lifesaving messages across Iraq.

In order to culminate these efforts and ensure sustainability, religious leaders must be actively involved in critical discussions on public health, social justice, and civic engagement.

The Objectives

Introduce the toolkit Faith in Action: Guiding Iraq’s Religious Leaders for Positive Social Change for recommendations and finalisation.

Design two one-year SBC-CE action plans aligning with UNICEF Iraq’s priority goal areas below:

• Every child including adolescents survives and thrives with access to nutritious diets, quality Primary Health Care, nurturing practices, and essential supplies.

• Every child, including adolescents, learns and acquires skills for the future.

• Every child, including adolescents, is protected from violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, and harmful practices.

• Every child, including adolescents, has access to safe and equitable water, sanitation, and hygiene services and supplies, and lives in a safe and sustainable climate and environment.

• Every child, including adolescents, has access to inclusive social protection and lives free from poverty.

What We Did

• MAGENTA held two action planning workshops with the Sunni and Shia endowments to introduce the toolkit and allow them to formulate SBC-CE interventions, by identifying their target audience, desired change, key messages, and dissemination channels.

• MAGENTA then revised and enhanced the toolkit based on participants’ feedback to improve its effectiveness and acceptance.

Social and Behavioural Principles

• Leveraging the expertise of religious leaders as key influencers for positive change, the toolkit provided a common framework for addressing social issues through SBC-CE principles.

• The action planning workshops employed diverse learning techniques like plenary discussions, case studies, group work, priority listing, and individual exercises.

• This participatory approach integrates continuous feedback loops and communication channels that allow for sustainable, impactful work that addresses the needs of the community.

Impact - Outputs

Impact - Participant Evaluation Results