In a recent assessment of the country’s commitment to Sustainable Development Goals, which consists of 155 indicators, 102 global SDG indicators, 28 proxy indicators and 25 supplemental indicators, we have relatively shown progress in achieving the global goals.
From a newspaper article online, according to the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) report, Philippines has achieved an outstanding primary enrollment rate of 94.2% in 2017 and in the past 2 years there was a significant increase of 8 to 10% for primary and secondary education. A 6% upward movement of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the lowest national unemployment rate last year. There are efforts to promote jobs that are environment-friendly, jobs that protect the ecosystem and biodiversity and help reduce pollution. In addition, private sectors have brought inclusivity in their business models. Expanded maternity leave benefits, narrowed the gap between the male and female working force, and has opened opportunities for senior citizens and physically challenged individuals. There is also an evidence of stronger peace and justice institutions. Initiatives like the creation of international community for the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the National ID system (Mabasa, R., 2019).
These are good figures, but comparing to the neighboring countries like Thailand, they have been maintaining a 0% poverty rate for a 7 years consecutive, a very low 9%rate of undernourishment, in 2017 they have already hit a mark of 96.97% of pre-primary and primary enrollment, a stunning 100% rate of the country’s population has access to electricity, 3.65% increase in the GDP by 2017, a 24.6% decline in the rate of people living in the slums, and a low percentage of homicide. For Malaysia, again by the last couple of years there’s no instance of poverty, 98.6% of pre-primary and primary students were enrolled, a noticeable increase of seats held by women in the parliament by 14.41%, by 2017 93.33% of the population has access to clean water and electricity, these nations are doing great in terms of planning, implementing and monitoring. The figures are all in a span of 2 years after the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) has transitioned to SDG (United Nations, 2019).
What I would like to point out is that although we are moving towards the direction that we are expecting to, there is a big probability that by 2030 (target completion year of SDGs), a lot of the indicators that we have will not be done. And how do we go about this? Identify accurately what the social problem is, understand what these issues are, planning, information dissemination through social marketing and monitoring of social change.
Realizing the “concept of development communication” and that is the fulfillment of human development through quality transformation. This aligns to the definition of Quebral’s development communication which is “an art and science of human communication applied to the speedy transformation of a country and the mass of its people from poverty to a dynamic state of economic growth that makes possible greater social equality and the larger fulfillment of the human potential”. Then we drill down deeper into the different definitions of “communication” like
- The process by which individuals share meaning (by Black and Bryant)
- Transmission of information, ideas, attitudes, or emotion from one person or group to another through symbols (by Theordorson and Theodorson)
- Occurs wherever one system, a source, influences another, the destination and manipulation of alternative symbols, which can be transmitted over the channel connecting them (by Osgood et al.)
- Social interaction through messages (by Gerbner)
- Process and Information (by Kincaid and Schramm)
and a lot more ( Ongkiko, Ila & Flor, Alexander, 2006).
When we speak of “social problems” we tend to connect to those topics/subjects of earnest concerns like housing problems, unemployment, gender inequality, infant mortality, climate change and injustices, crimes and delinquency and we find that each of these situations involve fairly a large number of people. Social problem appears to be any difficulty which concerns a large number of individuals which we wish to remove/correct and that the only solution is the discovery of a removal method. Each social problem is related to a specific social condition or social factor. Then we have social problem catalysts like statistical surveillance, special one-time quantitative studies, special non-quantitative studies, individual insight, vivid event, personal tragedy, uncovered evidence and pseudo-events that emerge in the public sphere.
“Social Marketing” on the other hand, pertains to the explicit use of marketing skills to aid in the translation of social action efforts with the use of effectively designed communication programs. Focuses more in influencing the acceptability of social ideas and in getting the ideas to be implemented successfully, we tap into defining our audience, understand the barriers, speaking to their values, a well thought of marketing material, way of implementation and post implementation monitoring.
The end result will be “social change” and as defined in a book by Ginsberg, this is a change in the social structure such as size of society, composition or balance of the parts of organization (1958). Additionally, this refers to changes in the social structure, social order, customs and traditions, norms, standards, ethical dimensions and traditions.
Some of the considerations realized are the following
- Social change is attributed to the desires and decisions of individuals
- Social change is the result of decisions to bring a particular result
- There are structural changes and strains
- Social change is brought upon also, by external factors or influences due to contact with other societies
- Social change can be a result due to confluence or collocation of elements from different sources and funnelled all together
- Emergence of common purpose
This module helps in untangling the complexities of the typology of social change. It provides a macro approach in the understanding of the problems and challenges, causes and implications or impact and concepts.
References
Mabasa, R. (2019, October 24). The Philippines reports substantial progress in achieving U.N. mandated SDGs. Retrieved February 8, 2020, from https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/10/24/the-philippines-reports-substantial-progress-in-achieving-u-n-mandated-sdgs/
United Nations (2019, December 20). SDG Indicators. Retrieved February 8, 2020, from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/
Ongkiko, Ila & Flor, Alexander. (2006). Introduction to Development Communication. 10.13140/RG.2.1.2952.6887. Retrieved February 8, 2020
Ginsberg, M. (1958). Social Change. The British Journal of Sociology, 9(3), 205-229. doi:10.2307/587016. Retrieved February 8, 2020