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POSITIVE DEVIANCE GUIDEBOOK

FOR PRIDE CAMPAIGN CURRICULUM

INDONESIA

A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE CLINTON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND RARE

Ratnasari Dewi

TABLE OF CONTENT

Acknowledgment 3

Introduction 5Purpose of this Guidebook 5Objectives for the Pride Campaign managers 5How to Use this Guidebook 6

Overview of Rare and Pride Campaign 6

Overview of Positive Deviance 7What is Positive Deviance? 7Positive Deviance: Yes or No? 8When to Use Positive Deviance 9Principle of Positive Deviance 10

Case Studies of Positive Deviance 10Malnutrition in Vietnam 10Marine Protected Area: Jamili’s Story 12

Approach of Positive Deviance 14

Conclusion 20

Bibliography 21

About the Author 22

TableTable 1 Knowledge and Skill Campaign Managers Expected to Know and Master 5Table 2 PD Versus Traditional Change Methods 8

2 | P o s i ti v e D e v i a n c e G u i d e l i n e

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In appreciation of their support and guidance in the process and completion of the capstone project with Rare, the student would like to recognize and thank the following people:

Clinton School of Public ServiceMarie T. Lindquist, Director of Field Service Education for her support during the preparation and finishing of capstone project.

Dr. Arvind Singhal, Instructor, for his introduction to positive deviance and connection to Rare so that the student can do her capstone with Rare, and input for this guidebook.

Dr. Christina Standerfer, Student Advisor, for her support during the preparation, finishing, and report writing of capstone.

Dr. Al. Bavon, Instructor, for his input about research methods for accomplishing capstone deliverables and his assistance in proofreading this guidebook.

Rare, United StatesAnna Thompson, Manager of Individual Giving for her assistance and guidance to set up and finalize the partnership between the student and Rare.

Kristen Carson-Owens, Manager of Human Resources for her assistance, patience, and guidance to help the student finishing this guidebook, especially for her availability to help proofreading.

Pamela Eddy, Director of Training, Katherine McElhinny, Manager of Global Programs, and Monica Pearce, Coordinator of Global Program for their guidance to partner with the Clinton student to develop a guidebook framework.

Brent Jenks, CEO, Dale Gavin, COO, and Paul Butler, Senior Vice President of Global Programs for their time to acknowledge the student’s positive deviance guidebook project.

Daniel Hayden, Director of Global Program Operations, Kevin Green, Quality Management and Improvement, and Duncan Macdonald, Operations Assistant for providing comprehensive accounts of Rare operations.

All interns and fellows, Cuiyi Zhang, Sharmilla Shitter, Benjamin Drill, and Chris Rooney , for the friendships and hard work.

Kamal Osman, IT Manager, and Russell Evans for their assistances regarding Rare information technology.

All Rare staff, for their time, hospitality, and generosity to the student in developing the positive deviance guidebook for Pride campaigns in Indonesia.


Rare, Indonesia Hari Kushardanto, Training Director, for his guidance, patience, assistance, recommendation, and friendship to partner with the student in researching and writing the positive deviance guidebook for Pride Campaigns in Indonesia.

Yayat Afianto, Pride Program Manager of Indonesia, for taking the time to participate in interviews and providing comprehensive accounts of Pride campaign.

The student also would thank her husband Saiful Azari for his patience, love, and friendship during her time working the capstone project and her friends in Washington DC: Leo Siregar, Jody Simanjuntak, Eduardo Sitompul, Mashuri Djalil, and Giovani Adrian for their hospitality. In addition, the student would like to thank her Fulbright colleagues Ida Lumintu, Atik Aprianingsih, and Wit Ri for their proofreading assistances.

Eventually, the student would like to thank God for mercy, strength, and guidance during the entire capstone experience.

The student hopes that positive deviance guidebook for Indonesia Pride campaigns that the student produced can improve Pride campaign in general and Rare operations worldwide.


“Seeing is believing” (American Proverb)

INTRODUCTIONHave you heard about the term “positive deviance”? You may find the term weird since the word “deviance” most of the time is associated with negative connotations. Coming from the science of psychology, according to Bennett and Robinson (2000) stated that deviance traditionally refers to different deliberate actions from community standards that intimidate the welfare of a community, its members, or both.

Can “deviance” be positive? After reading this guidebook, you may answer “Yes” to this question. In fact, positive deviance as an approach to development has been used to mobilize communities to find sustainable solutions to social issues such as malnutrition, human trafficking, female circumcision, and infant mortality (thepositivedeviance.org, 2000).

This guidebook provides a thorough description of positive deviance starting with its definition, its history, and its difference from other development approaches. This guidebook will share stories from some communities about “deviants” that may exist in every community. These “deviants” are doing some things in more positive and productive ways than their peers even though they face the same challenges such as lack of resources or limited access to resources. This guidebook is also intended to walk you through a process to identify a positive “deviant” and to conduct events or provide outlets for other community members to learn from him/her.

As you read this manual, keep in mind that it is not a “cookbook” for positive deviance. Each issue has unique contexts that create a need for different types of information.

Purpose of this guidebookThis guidebook is developed for Pride campaign managers. A Pride campaign is a social change movement that encourages a community to take pride in the species and habitats that a community has, and at the same time promotes alternatives to actions endangering environments (www.rareconservation.org, 2011). While the current curriculum thoroughly covers environment issues, community mobilization, social marketing, and project management, this guidebook showcases the importance of involving deviants as informal leaders in the campaign.

Pride campaign managers are the primary audience for this guidebook, but development actors and facilitators, members of mosques or churches, corporate social responsibility practitioners, nonprofit/nongovernment actors, government leaders, or individuals interested in facilitating social change may find this guidebook useful. Simply stated, if you believe that most answers of development issues rely within a community, you are more than welcomed to join the journey of meeting positive “deviants”.

Objectives for the Pride Campaign managersAfter reading and practicing positive deviance using this book, you should have the following knowledge and skills:

Table 1 Knowledge and Skill Campaign Managers Expected to Know and MasterUnderstand (knowledge) Conduct (skill)


1. Positive deviance concept 1. To help a community in defining a problem, current perceived causes of the problem, challenges, common practices, desired outcome (desired behavioral change)

2. Six steps in positive deviance approach 3. To help a community in determining the presence of positive deviance individuals or groups (positive deviance inquiry)

4. How to execute the 6 steps in positive deviance approach

2. To help a community in discovering uncommon but successful behaviors and strategies through positive deviance inquiry and observation

5. Relevancy of positive deviance to Pride campaign

3. To market “deviants” (individual or group) to be able to tell their stories and demonstrate their behaviors

4. To help a community in designing activities to allow community members to practice the discovered behavior

5. To help a community in conducting participatory evaluation to assess the successfulness of executed activities

How to use this guidebookThis guidebook is divided into six sections. Following the introduction, the second section provides the brief explanation of Pride campaign and Rare as the campaign owner. The third part provides a thorough description of positive deviance including definition, differences from other development approaches, advantages of implementing this approach, and principles. Section four provides a narrative of two case studies that serve as examples of positive deviance practice in reducing malnutrition in Vietnam and a “deviant” named Jamili that is recognized in a Pride campaign in Malaysia. Section five explores the step-by-step of positive deviance approach in the context of Pride campaign. The last section is the conclusion.

At the end of each positive deviance approach step, you will find a few reflective questions that offer you, especially Pride campaign managers, opportunities to identify your own stage in practicing positive deviance or to reflect your own stories and experience about positive deviance approach.

OVERVIEW OF RARE AND PRIDE CAMPAIGNThe word Rare is an adjective which means unusual, uncommon, unusually great, or unusually excellent (www.dictionary.com, 2006). Established in 1973, Rare believes that humans are the fundamental actors of nature preservation. Their understandings, their beliefs about its value, and their capacity to protect nature influence their relationships with nature. To help communities and policy makers find sustainable solutions toward environmental issues, preservationists are required to understand both science and social transformation skills (www.rareconservation.org, 2011)

Rare works in more than 200 communities in more than 50 countries with prominent biodiversity in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands. To become a leading organization that encourages communities to prioritize and preserve nature that leads to endangered species and


ecosystems protection around the world, Rare utilizes social marketing and communication methods to change communities’ awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. As many development actors understand that a successful community development should start from grass-roots level, Rare echoes the principle by developing a Pride campaign that inspires people to take pride in community’s natural assets and take action to preserve them. Borrowing private sector strategies, Pride campaigns utilize an intensive marketing effort to promote more environmentally sustainable practices.

Since Rare specializes in behavior change, a Pride campaign is designed to identify behaviors threatening biodiversity at the community level, find solutions needed to get people to change, and advance solution implementation in two years. Rare does not run the campaign, but it collaborates with local organizations and governments and trains them how to influence community behavior. Each organization sends a Rare Conservation fellow that will manage a Pride campaign. At the completion of a Pride campaign, a fellow will be granted a masters degree in communication from the University of Texas El Paso.

OVERVIEW OF POSITIVE DEVIANCEWhat is positive deviance?Development actors started practicing positive deviance as one development approach in 1970s. The practice gained prominence in 1990s when Tufts University nutrition professor, Marian Seitlin, wrote a book titled Positive Deviance in Nutrition. Jerry and Monique Sternin then used positive deviance approach to reduce malnutrition problem in Vietnam and published the findings of their work through Positive Deviance Initiative (www.positivedeviance.org, 2010). Since then, positive deviance is used in various social issues as mentioned earlier in this guidebook.

Positive deviance approach, according to Pascale, Sternin, and Sternin (2010), is based on the hypothesis that in every community, at least one person with the same resources and challenges has performed better than other community members. This approach focuses on resources and assets that a community already has, rather than focusing on what a community lacks. In most of cases, this person does not know that he or she is doing anything extraordinary. To find existing solutions to issues facing a community, a positive deviance approach relies on the presence of positive deviant individuals in a community.

Who are “deviants”? Are they your campaign stakeholders? “Deviants” can be individuals or groups of people that are doing something or behaving in certain ways that enable them to work out on a social issue more effectively than their peers. Both deviants and peers have the same access to resources or are affected by the same obstacles (Sternin, in Claswon, 2002, p.3). Deviants can be a family in Egypt that does not circumcise their daughter while other families do, or a husband in Pakistan who helps his wife that just had a baby around the house so that she can take care of the baby while other husbands do not help. You may have met them in your campaign sites; it is that person who does not cut trees in a forest while others do, or a fisherman who does not use bombs to fish while others do.

From the Pride campaign module that particularly focuses on involvement, meetings, and stakeholders facilitation, you learn to define campaign stakeholders and to understand advantages of involving them actively in your campaign. One of the key stakeholders is the deviant in the community. Why are deviants important for your campaign? They are important because they can influence other community


members through their positive practices. In other words, they are the key influencer that can help you mobilize the community for your campaign.

You may assume since positive “deviants” are different from others, they are easily recognized. You may think you can simply find community members who are positively different from others by observing them. However, Marsh, Schroeder, Deardan, Sternin, and Sternin (2004) argued that the prevalence of positive examples is only 1-10 % on average. To find them, a positive deviance inquiry needs to be conducted. Positive deviance inquiry (PDI) refers to methods utilized to determine who positive deviants are, what they do, and what desired practice a community wants to see.

Positive deviance: yes or no?You may wonder if positive deviance approach works in addressing any social issue since it seems to simplify problems. Heifetz, as stated in Sternin (2010), distinguished between two kinds of social problems: technical (the “what” problem) and adaptive (the “how” problem). The difference between them is their relations to social structure, culture norms, or behavior. Solution to a technical problem is more straightforward. The polio virus (a technical problem) can be overcome by the Salk vaccine (a technical solution). On the other hand, an adaptive problem is located within a complex social system, needs behavioral change, and is full with unintentional consequences. Positive deviance will work well in a complex social system because it believes in a community’s wisdom and involvement in mobilizing themselves. This approach also focuses on informal leadership, meaning a person can lead with no formal power or position.

Another interesting aspect of positive deviance is its focus on what sources a community has, rather than what a community lack. In other words, it is an assets-based approach. The differences between traditional and positive deviance approach can be seen below:

Table 2 PD Versus Traditional Change MethodsTraditional approach Positive Deviance approach

What are your needs? What are your strengths?What is wrong? What is working here?What can we provide? What are your resources?What is lacking in the community? What is good in your community?What is missing here? What can we build on?

adapted “Module for Trainer” by Indonesia Ministry of Health, USAID, Save the Children Positive Deviance Module, 2008, p. 52.

After knowing the differences between these two approaches, you as a Pride campaign manager may want to identify both the advantages and disadvantages of a positive deviance approach. Marsh (2004) defined the advantages:1. Easy to practice and beneficial to the most disadvantaged communities. Pride campaigns are

located in areas with rich biodiversity but poor communities. Therefore, positive deviance can be practiced.

2. Quick and affordable strategies. Working with communities often involves less rigid bureaucracy, so a process to recognize strategies is easier.

3. High possibility of sustainability. Learning from “deviants” can decrease the level of failure when a project or a funding ends. By attaching positive deviance approach to the current practice, Pride


campaigns and results can be more sustainable because targeted communities will be able to learn from each other. And do not forget: “deviants” are your key influencer!

4. Updated knowledge. Community members adopting positive deviance practices update the knowledge gained. When community members can learn together, they tend to inform each other about new knowledge or skills they obtain.

5. Local problem solving research is developed. Pride campaigns can encourage communities to conduct simple research about how to find innovative ways to manage environment issues. After the campaign ends, they will still able to solve their own problems.

6. Empowers communities. Positive deviance encourages communities to take independent actions towards their defined problems. Pride campaign managers can facilitate a process within community to find their own solutions.

However, you as a campaign manager must be aware of the challenges of a positive deviance approach as well. According to Marsh, et al., (2004), several points should be considered before practicing positive deviance. The disadvantages are as follows:1. Deviants are few. Discovering and distinguishing unusual constructive practice with an occurrence

rate of 1-10% of deviants in a community is challenging. Nevertheless, though few exist, that does not mean it is impossible to find “deviants” or “deviance” practices. Positive deviance inquiry can be a good way to find them.

2. Fresh thoughts may not be created because of common examples. Pride campaigns have been equipped with preliminary research, focus group discussion, and community meeting so that campaign managers can add some elements of positive deviance inquiry to those materials.

3. No assets available. A lack of required available assets, or other conditions where this practice is unfeasible, may cause inappropriateness of positive deviance approach. At the beginning of Pride campaign, campaign managers should not forget to also conduct asset assessment to see what resources that a Pride campaign site has.

4. Critique of simplification. Particular traditional small sample size may bring about critique. But, since Pride campaigns care about community contexts and open to fresh ideas, this disadvantage does not affect Pride campaign directly.

5. Expert in community mobilization, participatory study and positive deviance may not available in a community. However, Pride campaign managers are equipped with experiences in working with communities and with knowledge about environmental issues. You are also provided by Pride a thorough curriculum in social marketing and community mobilization. The expert Rare staff and mentors accompanying you are the resources that campaign managers can utilized in understanding all the program and conducting them.

There is not exact prescription for working on social issues in a social complex system. Positive deviance can be a complement to current development approaches and programs, including Pride campaign, to engage with communities and to embed local wisdom in the development process.

When to use positive deviance?As mentioned earlier, positive deviance will work best to solve problems that 1) lie within a complicated social system, 2) need alteration of social and behavioral norms, and 3) lead to unplanned consequences from the solution (Pascale, et al., 2005). Positive deviance will work well in a complex social system because it believes in community’s wisdom and community involvement in mobilizing themselves. This approach considers informal leadership, wherein a person can lead with no formal power or authority. It works well when solutions to a problem require behavioral change and community mobilization.


Community contribution during the positive deviance inquiry is crucial in successfully leveraging a positive deviance approach. In implementing positive deviance and finding “deviants,” community members should be invited to join community meetings, focus group discussions, interviews, and events to learn positive deviance practice together. Even though a positive deviance approach believes that leadership can be actively done without authority or beyond somebody’s authority, the buy in from formal community and religious leaders are vital as well.

A positive deviance approach can be attached to the Pride Campaign because the campaign works towards environmental issues through mobilizing community and changing its behavior to take pride in habitats and the species within them. In the Pride module that focuses on community mobilization, you are trained to focus your attention on the community condition as a system and your campaign goal rather than on individual behavior change. By focusing on community condition, you can engage everyone in your community. At the same time, you also learn that to engage all community members, you need to define key influencers who can help shape attitudes and opinions in your community. “Deviants” are one category of the key people who you can involve actively in your campaign to mobilize your community. Positive deviance inquiry can help you to find “deviants” and work with them to conduct the campaign.

Principles of positive deviance Tuft University (2010) identified principles that Pride campaign managers should remember when using a positive deviance approach. The principles are as follows: Community ownership. The whole process is held by the community. Part of problem as well as solution. All community elements that influence problems should be

involved. “Don’t do anything about me without me.” Community discovery. Through positive deviance inquiry, the community finds out present unusual,

flourishing practice, and approaches. Practice together. After finding positive practices, the community plans mean to perform and

magnify them. Social proof. “Someone just like me” can work on positive outcome, which the community will

indentify him/her. The “how” business. The motto of positive deviance is “You are more likely to act your way into a

new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.” Community benchmarking and monitoring. The community develops its own way to benchmark

and observe the improvement of community mobilization. Community-based facilitation. Positive deviance facilitation takes into account the community, its

members, and its civilizations. Positive deviance focuses on interactive engagement and community’s capacity to lead themselves.

Network. Enlarging present networks and developing new ones are also the focus of positive deviance process.

CASE STUDIES OF POSITIVE DEVIANCE You will read two case studies about positive deviance to give description on positive deviant and positive deviance approach implementation.

Malnutrition in Vietnam


In 1990, the Government of Vietnam asked Save the Children, an American-based nonprofit focusing on saving children, to help combat malnutrition in poor villages. Jerry Sternin, the program director, had only six months to conduct a malnutrition reduction program, or the Vietnamese government would ask him to leave. He and his wife, Monique thought about options they had. Hearing about positive deviance that Marian Zeitlin, a Tufts University nutrition professor, had researched, they considered the possibility of using this approach for the malnutrition problem in Vietnam.

Singhal, Sternin, & Dura (2009) explained that in some poor families, Zeitlin found healthier nourished kids than others even though those families faced same the obstacles and had no better access to resources. She observed what those parents of these children were doing to have better children. Nevertheless, Jerry and Monique have not yet found any project designs to defeat malnutrition using positive deviance, nor did they know specifically whether positive deviance would work in a community setting).

Jerry and Monique faced a challenging situation. The Vietnamese had strong opinions because the United States had a trade embargo with Vietnam. Previous less-successful malnutrition programs also caused villagers’ trust level to decrease. They decided to gain trust from all stakeholders first and believed the rest would follow. To discover what those healthier kids’ families were doing, Jerry and Monique worked with villagers to voluntarily conduct a baseline survey. The assigned villagers went to four villages to weigh children under three years old. Furthermore, the communities gathered to discuss the survey results and found out that 64% of the weighed kids were less nourished. Jerry, as a facilitator, asked questions to them whether they found better nourished kids from similar family situation. Surprisingly, the villagers discovered healthy children.

The Sternins thought if other community members could see and learn from positive practices and experiences, they were more likely to imitate it. Therefore, the Sternins and community members visited six families whose children were healthy and observed what the parents did. Those families and other community members were sweet potato and paddy rice farmers. In a few days of observation, they discovered family members with healthy kids gave greens of sweet potato that were rich in beta carotene, vitamins, and minerals like iron and calcium to their children. They also gathered tiny shrimps and crabs they found in paddy fields, which are rich with protein and minerals. Obviously, all the villagers had access to these foods, but some of them thought this practice was inappropriate.

Singhal et al., (2009) mentioned that besides noting what food they feed their children, the Sternins and the volunteers discovered how they feed their children. Because positive deviance is a “how” business, it is important to observe how things are done. Those parents or caregivers did three actions that distinguished them: they fed their kids more than two times per day; they were diligently nourishing the children by making sure they ate all the food; and they always washed their hands before and after feeding the children.

After they found the “deviants” and positive practices, Jerry and Monique needed to facilitate the communities to develop opportunities where they could learn from the deviants. The communities have to discuss and agree on ways they want to practice deviants’ positive practices. The idea is to emphasize “doing” more than “seeing” or “hearing” (Singhal et al., 2009, p.4). The communities in four villages agreed on having a two-week food program. In two weeks, parents with less healthy kids should search for sweet potato greens, shrimps, and crabs, learn new meal recipes, and feed their children together. At home, the parents and caregivers should feed their kids three to four times per day.


One of crucial elements of positive deviance is the community participation. Here, the communities weighed their kids before the program and compared their weights until two weeks after the program ended. The interesting part was the communities could see their children weight’s improvement. The program was proven successful. By doing the positive practice together and seeing the result, about 85% of malnourished children from the targeted villages were able to live healthier in only two years of piloting the program. Also, the Sternins stayed longer in Vietnam.

Singhal et al., (2009) stated that noticing the success, the Vietnamese government brought the program to the national level. It succeeded in assisting more than 2.2 million populations, including over 50,000 children to improve their health. Three insights as to why positive deviance will work in many intractable problems:

1. PD approach focuses on changing practice rather than the old approach addressing KAP (knowledge, attitude, practice). The old approach believes that increased knowledge will automatically changes attitudes that lead to the changing of practice, meanwhile positive deviance requires changes that are distilled from concrete action.

2. PD approach trusts in local wisdoms and considers communities as the main actor of change. Development experts from outside communities can act as facilitators assisting communities in running positive deviance inquiry, including finding “deviants,” identifying positive practices, and designing outlets that members of community will use to learn together those positive practices, but the solutions come from the community itself.

3. PD approach enables local leaders or “deviants” to lead a social change by showing positive practices to their peers. Since answers to a problem in PD are within communities, those solutions can be implemented immediately. Also, sustainability possibility is high because of the local solutions.

Marine Protected Area: Jamili’s StoryThis story is taken from Rare Planet (www.rareplanet.org, 2009). World Wide Fund (WWF) Malaysia conducted a Pride campaign for sustainable fisheries management in Tun Mustapha Marine Park in Sabah. Nigel Sizer and Hari Kushardanto of Rare found a unique story of Jamili, a fisherman from the area who apparently is the same like others.

Jamili lives with his wife and seven children, and he goes fishing in the ocean every day. He consumes some fish he gets and sells some in Kudat market in Malaysia. Because he lives on the beach, he finds out that many fishers favor destructive fishing methods such as using cyanide or bombs they make at home to catch more fish in a short time. Bomb fishing will immediately kill hundreds of fish and most of them float up to the top of the water, making it easier for the fishers to collect them. Even though bomb fishing causes tissue damage to the fish, the fishers are still able to dry and salt them before selling them to the market. Meanwhile, cyanide has a similar function. It is be sprayed into the ocean, causing the water to become clearer, so that the fishers can catch the fish easily. Cyanide seems safe; however, it kills the reef and other fish. The live fish market in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hong Kong will pay fishers high price, so the temptation to use these methods is strong. Moreover, while it is illegal to fish using bombs and cyanide in Malaysia, enforcing the law in open oceans is difficult.

Fishery community where Jamili is staying realizes those practices are destroying the ocean. The practices damage habitats where fish are growing that lead to unsustainable fish in the future. Unlike many other fishers, Jamili stopped using unsafe practices some years ago and is now fishing without the bombs and cyanide. The reason for this is simple. He understands that the bad practices will not only harm the oceans and his future generation but also kill small fishes. In a short time, fishing using bombs


and cyanide seem advantageous, however, in the a long run this practice will cause less fish in the area because coral where fish live and get food will be damaged as well.

Together with his sons, Jamili is attempting to protect the area from the fishers coming from his neighboring villages and the Philippines. However, his choice comes with the risk of intimidation from the other fishers. His family and he have received killing threats as well. Both the marine local police and the Government of Malaysia have not helped much yet. Assistance comes from World Wide Fund (WWF) Malaysia. WWF gave Jamili a camera so that he can take pictures of those who practice bomb fishing or use cyanide. The marine police have been able to impound their boats and fishing equipment as a result of Jamili’s effort.

So, what is extraordinary about Jamili? Is Jamili a positive deviant? Let’s look at him a little closer! At first glance, Jamili is not different from any of the other fishers in his communities. Compared to others in the community, Jamili is not better in regard to education and income levels, or fishing skills. However, he is exceptional because with his limitation, he stops fishing using cyanide and bombs. How do Jamili and his children fish? They back to fish with a conventional way using fishhook and fishing net. You may wonder if he still gets plenty of fish using the traditional way, specifically because he only catches big fishes. Jamili mentioned to Hari that at first he gets less fish. Few months after he changed his methods, he gets more fish but still a few less than his peers. But he believes that in the long run, his practice will lead to more sustainable fish and preserve ocean. Jamili has seven children, and he realizes that if the ocean is damaged, his children will not be a able to have fish in the future.

Jamili can be considered a deviant because without particular education and assistance, he and his family are practicing differently. They do not use a destructive method to fish. Even though he has not been trained, he and his family have started preserving the ocean to sustain their future family life. By protecting part of the ocean, he has become a behavioral change model for his family by empowering them to be able to fish safely. He is a deviant, albeit a positive one.

The further challenge is how to involve Jamili to share his reasoning, practices, and stories about how he is able to get good fish and a reasonable income. While the Rare Pride campaign has thoroughly equipped campaign managers with social marketing tools, communication skills, and management capacities, Jamili’s involvement can help accelerating campaign process. The other fishers can learn from Jamili’s stories and visions to have a better understanding of how to preserve the ocean and to get good marine products at the same time.

The sustainable fisheries management campaign led by J. Suzianna Ramlee (Suzie) from WWF Malaysia focuses on the fishery communities and the Malaysian government in the area. For the community, the campaign emphasizes the attempts of Jamili and other similar to him to preserve the ocean, highlight their stories and position them in their communities, support government bodies to acknowledge these preservation efforts run by the communities, and develop a state-based outlet which people like Jamili can become nature guardians for natural resources that the communities own specifically oceans.

With the assistance from Rare mentors, Suzie is able to find Jamili and involve him actively in the campaign. Jamili is invited to several community meetings to together with other community members define an environment issue that they see as important, to share his reasons why he stops fishing with harm methods, and to explain the rationale of preserving the ocean for their life and future generations’.


By involving a “deviant” that is following positive practices, the community members can see the advantage of changing their behaviors and understanding how to change them. The community members can learn from Jamili through his stories and his practices to fish safely and to preserve oceans for future generations.

Reading the stories above, you as a Pride campaign manager must ask how to find a positive deviant and how to implement positive deviance approach in Pride campaign because this campaign is already holistic and thorough. In the next section, you will be walked through positive deviance approach and ideas how to relate them to Pride campaign.

At the end of the steps, you will see several reflection questions that you can use to self-reflect your journey and to self-evaluate your process.

APPROACH OF POSITIVE DEVIANCE By now, you understand that a positive deviant can help social change agents to accelerate a social change movement and community mobilization process because from that deviant, community members can directly observe advantages of positive practices and learn how to perform them together. They are the key influencer because they are accountable, trusted, and their practices are proven works well in a disadvantageous situation.

In your campaign, a positive deviant can help you to influence the community by attending community meetings, joining community events, and becoming a spokesperson or a marketer of a good behavior. Pascale et al., (2010) and Basic Field Guide to the Positive Deviance Approach established by Tufts University in Boston (2010) suggested five steps of positive deviance approach. The steps are justified to be applicable for a campaign manager to also include the steps in a Pride campaign. Let’s use Jamili as the example and walk through the steps together.

1. Define a problem, current agreed causes of the problem, challenges, common practices, and desired outcome (behavioral change)

Rare chooses to partner with an organization that focuses on environment issues actively involving communities. The organization must be local, within communities, and has been working for a period of time. Therefore, a Pride campaign manager understands what problems exist with the communities.

To run a Pride campaign effectively, a campaign manager should make sure that community members understand issues or problem they will work together. A campaign manager will identify stakeholders that will involve in a campaign. For a Pride campaign, stakeholders are people that will influence your campaign design and eventually will get advantages from your campaign. They are important because they increase your level of campaign success, and their buy-in can increase your level of confidence (Rare, n.d). Community members that your campaign is targeting are the main stakeholders. As a campaign manager, you should observe the dynamics between formal and informal structures within the community. In every community, besides people with formal titles like a village head, local governments, head of fishery communities, head of farmer cooperation, or religious leader, they can be also informal


leaders without formal titles, but who have the respect of community members. It is important as a campaign manager to understand how they relate to each other.

A Rare campaign manager can conduct focus group discussions to gather stakeholders. They will discuss and agree on what the problems are, what is causing the problems, what the current common practices that community uses to address the problems are, and what the threats to the community to change are. Furthermore, it is also important to know what behavioral change that your community wants to see. Through focus groups, you can observe how all stakeholders’ involvement, understanding of issues, and dynamic among them.

The importance of this first step is to gather initial or baseline data for your campaign, data that set up a base of information from which progress can be noticed. Through methods like focus group discussion and mapping, you will get information about the current practices and agreement from your community on criteria for exception to find deviants (Pascale, 2009, p.28).

When you facilitate focus group discussion, you should remember that authentic and informative answers only can be obtained through open-ended questions that ask what, how, why, why now? Depends on issues that you are working, you may need to obtain a brief of socioeconomic ranking of your community as baseline information in your discussions. For example, you will find how much Jamili’s peers make per day. We can assume because they use faster but unsafe way to fish, they will get more fish than Jamili. Later, when finally your community meets with Jamili, you can find out how much Jamili makes for comparison. As a campaign manager, you can use this data to give evidence for the community that Jamili may earn smaller income every day, but he will be able to fish longer because the area he goes fishing will have more fish. Based on Pascale et al., (2009), below are the questions that you can use to lead discussions.

To create more lively discussion within the group, try these questions: What do you think are the problem that we have in our community? Who wants answers to that question? What do you think the answer is to this question? Who knows the answer? Any idea what the possible answer is?

To engage the participants in more discussions,, try these questions: Who do you think own the problems? Besides all stakeholders that attend our discussion today, who else do you think we should

involve? Do you have any idea how to involve them? Why do you think it is important to involve them? How do you think involving them will benefit us? What will you do if they do not want to be involved?

To get information about threats that the community has, these questions may help: Who can describe what the current practice that our community does to fish in the ocean is? What are the plus and the downside of that practice? Do you think this practice will benefit us and our future generations? If not, do you think there is any way that is better than our current practice?


From several focus group discussions, you will be able to know whether you have invited all stakeholders to discuss their problems. For example, you always conduct focus groups at night because that is the only time fishers can attend. However, when you move discussions time in afternoons, their spouses may be able to come and give different point of view about the problems. Or, inviting the youth to discussions will enrich your future sustainability plan.

Reflection Questions1. After the discussions, do you think the community members understand the environment issues

they have, causes of those issues, current practices that the community does towards the issues, and the threats to change?

2. Getting the main stakeholders to agree on the desired outcome of your campaign is crucial. The desired outcome can be a behavioral change or environmental outcome (Lapping, et al., 2002). Before you continue to the next step, has your community reached the outcomes they want to see?

2. Determining the presence of positive deviance individuals or groups (positive deviance inquiry)

In this stage, you should know what the community thinks are the problems, cause of the problems, current practices done by the communities, and challenge to change current practices. Your community members have also agreed on the behavioral changes they want to see and/or the environmental impact they want to have. The next step is to discover the presence of positive deviants who have been doing a better practice than their peers.

Jerry Sternin, a positive deviance practitioner, reminds us that positive deviance approach focuses on positive behaviors, not individuals (as stated in Sparks, 2004, p.49). However, the existence of positive deviants is vital to lead a learning process about positive practice. As stated above, deviants can be positive because they are in the same less advantageous situations like their peers but they are able to do better. Like the two examples in the case study, you may have met people like them during your work with your community but you do not know what to name them.

In the initial community meetings or focus groups, you may or may not find a deviant (individual or group) like Jamili easily. However, because you have already known the current practice that your community does, in principle, you can ask the questions that establish exclusion criteria (Pascale, 2009, p.203). You can simply ask around the community members, including the informal leaders, or the village head with these types of questions:

1. Do you know someone in your community that people do not make friends with? (Several community members do not like Jamili because he does not fish using bombs and cyanide)

2. Do you know someone in your fishery community that is unusual, such as a fisher that is not using bombs and cyanide to fish?

3. Do you know someone or family in your community that go to a forest but not cut trees? They specifically just take non-timber products.

In focus group discussions, you can also deliver similar questions to your participants. You should be careful in instituting measures that you only focus on those individuals or groups that are challenged by similar obstacles as their peers. Sternin suggested that positive deviance facilitators should remove “those that are true but useless practice – TBUs” (as stated in Sparks, 2004, p.49). Aspects that only


several individuals use or have access to them, but they cannot be utilized and practiced by all community members, are called TBUs. Those aspects are ineffective in problem solving. Currently, many donors or development organizations conduct various community-based programs in communities, and several communities may involve or get assistances from various aids that enable them to perform better. Community members that are able to live well as compared to their peers but who get assistance from donors or institutions are not considered deviants.

In the Jamili case, he has been fishing without bombs and cyanide before gets any assistance from WWF Malaysia. He can be considered a deviant because he has the same limitations as his peers such as lack of education, fishing skills, or financial, but he was able to perform better. He does not harm the oceans, while he is still able to make money for his family. He also teaches his family to fish with safe methods and to protect the ocean in front of their house.

Once you find people like Jamili and his family, as a campaign manager, you can observe and interview them. Because most people may reluctant to be called deviants, you can address them in different way. Through observations and interviews, you will be able to understand Jamili’s behavior motives, his bravery in dealing with other community members that threaten him and his family, and his vision of life and towards the ocean.

Reflection Questions:1. Have you ever met a positive deviant like Jamili before you understood the positive deviance

concept in your campaign site?2. If yes, did you meet this person by accident, or did you ask questions that establish exclusion

criteria to find them?3. Do you think it is easy or difficult to find a deviant in your campaign sites?4. After you read the explanation above, do you think it is doable or not to find a deviant in your

campaign sites?

3. Discovering exceptional but successful behaviors and strategies through positive deviance inquiry and observation

By now, you have a better understanding about how your community thinks about the environment problems in the area - it could be marine protection, illegal logging, or endangered species. They are complex intractable problems that need complex solutions involving community behavioral change.

You also have found the positive deviants in your community. The third step is to discover good practices those deviants do. Most deviants do not understand that they have been doing things differently than their peers. Through diligent interview, observations, and discussions, you and the communities will be able to find out what makes them different than their peers.

In this stage, you can invite community members to interview and observe the deviants with you. In Vietnam, when the community members discovered their peers with children more nourished than theirs, they decided to join Jerry Sternin to interview and observe what they did. In a period of time, several community members frequently visited the deviants’ house and farm so that they could witness what the deviants practiced differently (Singhal, et al., 2009, p.s2). The community members could ask the deviants about their motives, then, deeper conversations would take place. This activity has two


purposes: it connects people who have not connected before through conversations and information exchange, and it increases the trust level between the community and deviants.

Reflection questions:1. What happened in Vietnam gives evidence that if the community sees the solutions themselves,

they possibly will implement it. Have you offered the opportunity for community members to come with you to meet the deviants?

2. In several meetings with the deviants, how can you describe the level of engagement between them and other community members?

3. Do you think they can get along well?

4. Marketing deviants (individuals or groups) to tell their stories and demonstrate their behaviors

The deviants, in this step, may have been joining in community meetings, focus group discussions, or other community engagements where they can tell their narratives. They now understand that what they have been doing to leave a positive impact on the environment and future generations. The next challenge is how to position them as “informal leaders” and market their stories.

To raise the deviants’ level and role in the community, you should observe that deviants like Jamili are able to play the role of key influencer in your campaign. Because he is from the community and his work is evidently successful, he is able to influence the community to change their behaviors. The community is likely to believe in him if they can see the proof of why they should alter their current practice. The problem is that not everyone in the community has access to the deviants.

Pride campaign is equipped with social marketing, communications, and public relations tools that campaign managers can choose depends on the situation. To successfully position Jamili as an informal leader, you can help him practicing public speaking so that he is able speak confidently in community meetings or meet with other partners. You can work with him to develop a network in the community by connecting him with people who favor his practice. This network will serve a support system for Jamili to spread his stories and gain trust from his community.

Introducing Jamili with significant partners will be also valuable to program sustainability. The fishery community in Tun Mustapha Marine Park can work with those partners to continue a fisheries management program after two-year Pride campaign ends. Related collaborators such marine ministry or business entities may be best financial and capacity supports, while marine police can assist the community to establish community marine polices to patrol their fishing area. Media can also be a significant partner to hold the program accountable and transparent, as well as to serve news and publication about the program.

In addition, Pride campaign managers can market Jamili’s stories through series of communication activities using mass media, such as community radio or local television. Once he is comfortable talking in public, he can be profiled in local media or speak on a talk show. Moreover, you can also invite newspaper or magazine to profile him and his family. The community will relate better to visual stories in addition to stories they hear in community meetings or focus group discussions. Those activities will help the community understand Jamili and give proof that what he is doing is advantageous for him and his future generations. Your campaign accountability is reinforced as Jamili involves in your campaign to


help his own community. Your campaign is rich with the assets and solutions that your community already has combined with social marketing and communication expertise that you and Pride campaign offers.

Reflection Questions:1. You will need media to highlight the deviants. How well do you know the media? 2. Can you think about type of media that will fit to highlight the stories of deviants in your

community?3. After the deviants are in the media, how do you see your community react to it?

5. Designing activities to allow community members to practice the discovered behaviors

The importance about this step is how to identify strategies that every community member can access, and how they will decide how they want to learn and practice it together. Community members will define what activities they want to conduct. The power of the Pride campaign is because the campaign is run by local organizations that have been working with communities that understand environmental issues in their communities, and know assets their communities owns to manage those issues. The organizations do not serve the role of expert, but they act as the facilitators to help the communities helping themselves, meanwhile Rare focuses on assisting the local organizations in running each step of the campaign.

Pride campaign managers, together with community members, have been conducting such activities that enable them to meet to learn from deviants such as series of community meetings, visit to schools, community monitoring to campaign sites (ocean, forest, etc), develop no-take zone agreement, or community training. It is crucial that all campaign activities are created together and agreed by the community - including the deviants - to establish community ownership.

When you and your community develop the activities, think about the method to monitor anticipated impacts that may happen. Also, you can invite them to develop indictors to monitor progress, both behavioral changes (fisher stop fishing by bombing and using cyanide) and campaign outcomes (preserved ocean and more fish in the ocean).

Reflection Questions:1. Have you invited both deviants and other community members to discuss what events or

activities they want to use to learn together about positive practices?2. How do you see the engagement levels among them in the discussions? Are they excited to run

activities together?3. To have successful events is crucial for Pride campaign and for the target community. Have you

and your community thought about creating achievable activities?4. When your community reaches agreements on activities they want to conduct, have you

analyzed whether those activities engage the targeted groups?

6. Conducting participatory monitoring and progress to assess the successfulness of executed activities

Monitoring the impact of campaigns and learning activities is crucial to see whether those activities are effective in mobilizing the community and changing community behavior. Monitoring will record


progress evidences that give valid data for immediate improvements. Also, monitoring will hold your campaign activities accountable.

In Vietnam, the monitoring of children’s weight started right after the community began learning the new behaviors from the deviants for two weeks. The monitoring continues until two weeks after the activities stop. The community is divided into some groups to weight the children and record the data. The monitoring is completed within six weeks, and then the data is presented in community meetings. The finding shows the new behaviors of feeding children three to four times with shrimps, crabs and sweet potato greens and washing hands before and after feeding kids lead to the increase of children’s weight.

When the community agrees on changing their destructive way to fish to safer ones without bombs and cyanide, plan the procedure for monitoring the ocean together. For example, as a Pride campaign manager, you can work together with experts that understand how to measure fish existence in the ocean before and after behavioral change. Moreover, you and your community can establish a task force to monitor the ocean assisting marine police to protect the oceans from irresponsible fishers. When people know that they have the right to their ocean, they will voluntarily preserve it.

Eventually, other community meetings will be held to update the progress to the entire community. The more they know throughout the progress, the more they will believe in local solutions and your campaign. Additionally, the progress record can be shared in a community building or any place that every community member can access.

Reflection Questions:1. Have you and your community established indicators to monitor the progress of behavior

changes and campaign outcomes? 2. Have you included various activity members to do monitoring activities (men, women, youth

groups, etc)?

CONCLUSIONSeeing is believing.

That American proverb best explains the positive deviance approach. Positive deviants are the proof that solutions lie within communities. Simply, when someone is “just like me,” I can relate to him or her better, and I am much more likely to do it myself. A person like Jamili is evidence that with same challenges and limitations his fellow community members face, he is doing better than his peers.

The Rare Pride methodology provides a thorough social marketing and communication campaign that focuses on changing community behavior and mobilizing community members. Together with the community, the campaign manager attempts to find solutions to environmental issues by inspiring people to take pride in community’s natural assets and take action to preserve them. Through its unique methods, this campaign definitely can facilitate a deviant like Jamili to actively lead the process in his community to be proud of what they have.

Jamili comes from the community, so that other community members can relate well to his positive behavior. The community can see a living proof from doing the safer way to fish in the ocean. A deviant


like Jamili can help you increase community buy in and trust that lead to the increase of your campaign effectiveness. Eventually, because the solutions come from the community, the sustainability of your campaign is feasible.

Bibliography

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Clawson, V. (2002). Application of the Positive Deviance Approach to Anti-Trafficking Programming in Nepal – A Trial in Nuwakot District. Retrieved November 5 from http://www.childtrafficking.com /Content/Library/?pg=1&CID=bcbe3365e6ac95ea2c0343a2395834dd|515a5e

H Kushardanto. (2009, March 12). Positive Deviant. [Blog]. Retrieved from http://www.rareplanet.org/en/blog-post/positive-deviant (2010, November 5).

Indonesia Ministry of Health, USAID, Save the Children. (2008). Positive deviance module. In Module for Trainer. Retrieved October 10, 2010 from http://www.positivedeviance.org/pdf /manuals/ PD%20Module%20-%20part%2001.pdf

Lapping, K., Marsh, D.R., Swedberg, E., Sternin, J., Sternin, M., Schroeder, D.G. (2002). The positive deviance approach: Challenges and opportunities for the future [Electronic version]. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 23(4), 128. Retrieved from http://www.positivedeviance.org/pdf /publications/The%20Positive%20Deviance%20Approach.pdf

Marsh, D.R., Schroeder, D. G., Daerden, K. A., Sternin, J., Sternin, M. (November 13, 2004). The power of positive deviance [Electronic version]. British Medical Journal, 329, 1177-1179. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC527707/pdf/bmj32901177.pdf

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Singhal, A., Sternin, J., Dura, L. (2009). Combating Malnutrition in the Land of a Thousand Rice Fields [Electronic version]. Positive Deviance Wisdom Series, 1, 1-6. Retrieved from http://www.positivedeviance.org/pdf/wisdom%20series/PDVietnam07112010.pdf

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About the author

A native of Jakarta, Indonesia, Ratnasari Dewi recently worked as communication assistant for the World Bank in the post-tsunami area of Banda Aceh. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from Padjadjaran University in Bandung, and then continues her study at the Clinton of Public Service. In 2010-2-11, Dewi has collaborated with Rare Conservation to develop a positive deviance guidebook as a complement to current Pride campaign conducted by Rare Conservation specifically in Indonesia. With her passionate to connect her American experience with Indonesia, she valued this collaboration experience as the enrichment for her skill and knowledge.

Contact Information: [email protected], [email protected]


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