Change Making: How we adopt new attitudes, beliefs and practices

Overview

The 44 people, involved in the ‘We Can’ Campaign to end violence against women, whose experiences of change are the basis of this document, are from a volatile part of the world – South Asia – whose countries, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are all undergoing rapid, complex, uneven and often conflict-ridden social and political change. They are people who one way or another are ‘makers of change’, embracing change in their own lives, and promoting change in the institutions of which they are a part – in the family,
household, community, voluntary and private sectors, and the state. They have chosen not to be bystanders. For all of them, just as it is impossible to step back into the same water in the stream, their lives cannot be the same again. This study examines the processes of change through the voices of these Change Makers and Campaign Alliance members, who were selected for their active involvement in the ‘We Can’ Campaign, and interviewed at the end of 2010. In it we try to understand the how and why of the change process these individuals describe, and how and why they think others changed as a result of work they carried out.