Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

3.7 THEORIES OF CHANGE IN CAMPAIGNING
OVERVIEW
The theory of change describes how the change that a campaign promotes can happen:
what do the target audiences need to do to bring about the desired change? What are
the assumptions that guide the campaign to the long-term goals it seeks to achieve? An
explicit theory of change helps to determine the most effective ways to influence
target audiences. Agreeing on a theory of change is a key element in building shared
understanding within a campaign team or an alliance. It brings together goals, strategies
and outcomes in a coherent story, providing language across divergent interests,
constituencies and styles of working within a team or an alliance (Klugman, B., 2009.
Less is More– Thoughts on Evaluating Social Justice Advocacy).
The theory of change should be grounded in robust, relevant findings from research.
Behaviour change campaigns increasingly draw on established scientific theories on
human behaviour change, some of which are outlined in Campaign Approaches in this
module. The theory of change should be described in a few simple sentences or
visualized on a chart (see below for examples), and discussed with others, including
people who know nothing about the campaign, to identify aspects that need further
thought and more clarity.
The Theory of Change as a Strategic Plan for a Campaign
The transformation and innovation required to change the power relations that are at
the root of gender-based violence require moving in complex environments in which a
VAW campaign can only partly predict what will be the results of activities, and
therefore cannot present a solid plan laying out the relationships of cause and effect
between activities, outputs and outcomes. In addition, although the challenges or
problems they face may be clear – and often they are not – there tends to be
disagreement about how to address them. And when they achieve a solid solution to a
given problem, each situation is so dynamic that only rarely is the solution replicable in
other times or contexts.
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Campaigns December 2011