A friend of mine, Radha Patel, sent me an email this week about a consulting project she’s doing with the UN and an online symposium where she posed a question about the connection between female genital mutilation (FGM) and culture.

The following are some of my thoughts that I shared with her on how a local community can use a culturally-based or community-based change approach to stop the practice of FGM…

…There is a model that might support this called “positive deviance.” In essence, it’s a social change model that looks for people in a system that are “deviating” from the norm in some “positive” way. It’s been used in hospitals to reduce HIV infections, in schools to reduce drop out rates, and even in Egypt to form 12 “FGM free” communities.

What I like about the approach is that it looks for people at the margins of a system that are already expressing beneficial or desired behaviors or actions (so in this case, it would be finding men and women, old and young, within communities where FGM is the norm, but are not participating in FGM practices). Using a positive deviance approach, you would seek to build a learning community (in this case, presumably with both community leaders and other support groups like the UN).

It’s a strength-based approach (rather than a problem-based approach). For those who are familiar with Appreciative Inquiry or Popular Education work, it’s similar in some ways. This positive deviance change process says, “hey, there are individuals within this community who face the same issues (resources, culture, etc.) as others, but they are doing something different.” You look to see what they are doing differently and find ways to support that.

Sometimes change processes are focused on just those at the top (those who have positions of authority, access to resources, or formal leadership positions). It’s important to include them. It’s also important to include those who are marginalized. It’s those at the margins who are working with less and have come up with creative adjustments to get something done with less.

When to use a Positive Deviance approach:

-    When a problem requires behavioral changes or social change
-    When it’s a seemingly intractable problem
-    When there is a presence of a positive deviant(s)
-    When there is leadership and positive deviant champions

The process discovers ideas that are already out there. It enables people to act today. It creates culturally appropriate solutions.

The challenges to this approach lie in scaling up. It’s labor and time intensive. It requires comfort with uncertainty, and for practitioners to be facilitators instead of experts.

Positive Deviance comes from the research of Marian Zeitlin and was experimented with and further developed by Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin at Tufts University.