The campaign “Bano Nayi Soch: Buno Hinsa Mukt Rishtey” (BNS), is the flagship campaign of Oxfam India. This campaign aimed at advancing gender justice by bringing positive changes in the thinking, perceptions, attitude, behaviour and practices at the community level and by challenging and changing prevailing patriarchal social norms. The campaign was conceptualised and carried out as a multiyear, multi-state and multi-stakeholder programme with young people as the drivers of social norm change. The campaign was launched in Patna on 5th December, 2016 and over the next 5 years, was implemented across 5 states – Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh involving about 220 youth BNS ‘Champions’.

The current study was specifically instituted to consolidate the learning from the BNS Campaign journey, specifically from the norm change and youth engagement perspectives. Being a qualitative study, the effort was to deep dive into specific identified areas of study and get insights from the evolution of the campaign for larger learning and sharing.