ILO knowledge mobilization guide

The ILO's FUNDAMENTALS branch produces reports that could be as life-saving as any pharmaceutical breakthrough. The ILO relies on the importance and effectiveness of research reports and tools to engage decision makers in the work of ending forced labour and child labour. The ILO is recognized as the leading source of global labour market research and data, and the reports it releases are comprehensive and filled with data that document the extent and forms of child labour and forced labour. Read more

Before you start to work with this tool, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got the right people on your team to provide input and skills and different points in the development process. Having the right people on board from the start will help you build a shared vision, and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to do their best work. Read more

Knowledge mobilization requires us to provide knowledge to people making critical decisions that can end forced labour and child labour in a form that is useful and meaningful to them. Creating a product that makes a difference means that you have to start with an understanding of the change you’re working toward, knowing which decision-makers can make that change, understanding and appealing to their values, and making that knowledge available within the spaces and habits they now use to acquire new insights. Read more

The questions are not as simple as they seem. It’s helpful to answer them twice, using the Four question worksheet provided at the end of question 4.

1. What do you want to happen that isn’t happening right now?
2. Who has to act in order for that to happen? Which decisions do they need to make?
3. What is most important to them, and what would they believe if they were taking action?
4. Where is their attention now?

First, simply go through the questions and answer them as thoughtfully as you can. Then, answer them again, taking the following factors into consideration.

Now that you’ve built your team and worked together to identify the strategy, you’ll want to ensure you have a shared vision of what you’re actually creating, and then build a budget and timeline for what it will take to make it happen. Read more

Once you’ve nailed down your theory of change, strategy, budget, and workplan and gained support from the key actors for your project, you’ll need to immerse yourself in the context of the problem you’re working to solve. Work with the country focal point to identify and learn about the people who are positioned to engage with and use the data, including local advocates, journalists, policy-makers and decision-makers, and who can help you understand the local context.

It will be helpful to organize these insights by the spheres in which you can work to drive change. Most successful efforts work in some combination of six spheres of influence through which it is possible to affect behavior, opinions, and decisions. Deciding which of these spaces to work in is a critical strategic decision and must be linked to a carefully considered theory of change.

The effect of media on opinions and behavior is well documented. Whether through agenda-setting theory or most theories associated with mass communication, the role that media has in affecting perceptions of the importance of an issue, establishing dominant narratives, or building the credibility of a particular approach or perspective can’t be underestimated. However, in an age where mass media consumption is giving way to far narrower channels associated with social media, podcasting, and platforms that allow one to carefully curate which outlets and ideas one is exposed to, media are a less reliable and more complex tool for change. Much has and will be written about the news media and role of journalism in shaping behavior, opinion, and action. How the change agent can work effectively in this domain changes constantly. For example, a cover story in the New York Times Magazine at one time virtually ensured that a program or idea would gain the attention and support of policymakers and other influentials. But in an increasingly fractured world, that kind of coverage is equally likely to build mistrust among those who discount mainstream media. Working within this sphere has always required a clear focus on target audiences and an understanding of the desired outcome.

The policy sphere refers to laws and government-funded programs that drive change. Policies can mandate individual behavior, but can’t work alone to ensure that the particular behavior will be adopted. They can also make it easier for people to act in their own interest or protect the rights of those who are vulnerable. Working in the policy domain is complicated. Policymakers themselves can activate media or communities of influence to ignite change and are often themselves members of communities of influence. It is also true that law doesn’t perfectly direct behavior, and laws and regulations that aren’t enforced are meaningless.

For any issue, and in every region, there is an array of scholars, celebrities, activists, businesses and advocates who engage with an issue and whose research, actions or opinions shape how others see it. Their efforts will often affect others’ decisions to act on an issue. Communities of influence are broad and can be loosely or closely connected. Members of a community of influence include people who do not share an opinion or perspective on an issue.

Social change unfolds within larger economic systems and business can have a significant role in furthering or hindering change. Similarly, activists can engage in activities that affect corporate values or brand equity. When advocates, foundations, and the federal government teamed up to take on the tobacco industry, one of the first lines of attack was to create policies that made it far more difficult to sell tobacco to children. In response to a challenging business environment in the United States, American tobacco companies sought new markets in far less-regulated Asian countries. In China, the smoking rate among men is more than 60 percent, with no signs of turning around (Chen, Peto, Zhou, Iona, Smith, Yang, Guo, Chen, Bian, Lancaster, Sherliker, Pang, Wang, Su, Wu, Wu, Chen, Collins, & Li, 2015). For their part, business can engage with key stakeholders through corporate social responsibility or take on causes of their own through corporate social advocacy. It is impossible to ignore the agenda-setting roles and significant change that large corporate policies can engender.

Activism is direct action on behalf of a cause that can include protests, boycotts, marches, and political organizing. Activism’s effectiveness is always bolstered by a larger strategy that draws on the other spheres. Marches generate media attention, which can elevate the significance of an issue. Boycotts can make it impossible for a corporation to ignore the interests of a specific group. But in the absence of a specific call to action that’s tied to a larger goal, they can flounder. Moreover, it can be hard to determine the direct connection between activism and change.

Our behaviors are strongly affected by our perceptions of what people like us will do. This phenomenon offers a powerful force for driving social change. When social norming efforts are matched with policy change, they can be an effective way to get people to avoid behaviors that are already illegal, or to engage in more constructive behaviors. While the other spheres focus on creating the larger context for change, social norming focuses on getting people to adopt new behaviours at the individual level.

Together, these spheres comprise a powerful arsenal for change and choosing which spheres to work in are some of the most critical decisions a change strategist can make.

Use this worksheet to map existing activities to end forced labour and child labour within each sphere, identify new actions within each, and then to examine how factors already inplace might help drive change.

• Download the Editable Worksheet

In this module, you’ll apply what you’ve learned from steps 2-4 to capture new research questions, create an engagement plan and identify the formats, distribution tools and platforms that fit with how the people you want to act consume information and make decisions. Read more

Through this process, you’ve spent a lot of time identifying specific people who are poised to take action. You’ve also identified their worldviews, moral values and identities and their existing habits. As you think through your plan for engaging those individuals, you’ll also want to think about which of the six spheres they’re working within, and the arrows you drew from other spheres that can affect them. Read more

Use what you learned in answering question four–what are the habits of the people you are trying to reach?–to figure out the right platform and the ideal format for a report. The design thinking process requires you to immerse yourself in the experience of those who you have identified as actors. How and where do they consume information? What do they see as credible? How might they incorporate elements of this report into their own policy making or advocacy? Through what devices do they tend to consume information? Read more

Until we understand what to do with it, data is an abstraction. Each of these tools have a specific value for sharing data, and regardless of which you choose, the format you choose will be part of a larger set of tools that help others engage in the significance of the issue and make specific choices about the allocation of the resources available to them. Read more

An infographic produced in 1787 profoundly changed the global economy. It included a single data point–the number 454–but it did so in a way that changed how the world saw the transatlantic slave trade forever. The diagram of the Brooks showed in heartbreaking starkness how 454 people were crammed and stacked onto the ship as it sailed from Africa’s Gold Coast to the West Indies. When abolitionist Thomas Clarkson wrote about the image in 1808, he said the “print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans.” Read more

While charts and infographics have been in use for centuries, there’s not a lot of research that helps us understand how people interpret them. For example, when you write an article, you can be reasonably sure that most people will read it in order. But charts are different, and research suggests that people process the elements in different sequences. Scholars are still learning what works best, and some of the research that is available relies on formats that are rarely used now. And the formats and technology continue to evolve, making it difficult to measure or offer certainty about one approach over another. However, we can borrow from other disciplines to offer some guideposts.

It’s also true that this work is filled with paradoxes. A chart that is beautiful and catches the eye may obscure a critical point but may also be more memorable. And most research is built around studies in which a chart has the full attention of the viewer, a condition rarely seen in real life. It’s natural to crave some hard and fast rules for design, but few exist.

1. Make your point inescapable

In your data visualizations make sure the point you are trying to make is clear. Your point should be obvious even if the people who read your chart aren’t experts. Start your design process by identifying the decisions leaders can make based on your data and identifying how specific points can help them make those decisions. This analysis will lead you to the key point you want your chart to make. Read more

What do you want people to do as a result of engaging with the information you’ve shared? What paths are available? Identifying a clear and meaningful call to action starts with a sound strategy like you outlined in module one. If you’ve identified the group of people who are positioned to make a difference through action, creating a meaningful call to action should be much easier. Read more

As an organization that has been dedicated to better work for more than 100 years, the International Labour Organization has deep credibility. The organization’s authority is further bolstered by its tripartite structure of employers, workers and governments. The ILO is a trusted source for helping governments track their progress toward improving labour standards. Read more

When a new drug becomes available, manufacturers don’t simply stock their warehouses and wait for people to order it. They send representatives to medical offices to train medical professionals when and how to prescribe the drug, help them understand its limitations and think about which patients could most benefit. Read more

Building the opportunity to learn and iterate throughout the process is critical to creating something that achieves your goals, and documents what you’re learning so you can apply those insights to future projects. You’ll want to think about both internal and external forms of documentation. Internal documentation helps you refine your ideas and document the process so you can learn from it over time. External evaluation will help you assess whether your project was effective in meeting your goals. Read more