Like many other countries, Peru is worried about standardized test outcomes and what they mean for students, especially for the increasing gap between students from high- and low-income households. The standard approach to improving student achievement involves investing more in teacher training and learning materials. Researchers from the World Bank, the University of Oxford, and the Group for Analysis for Development (GRADE) in Peru decided to take a different approach. They developed a project called “Expand Your Mind” which is focused in developing motivation and perseverance. Through this growth mindset intervention, students and teachers in 800 selected public schools and high schools were asked to read an essay titled “Did You Know You Can Grow Your Intelligence?” and to do a series of activities to demonstrate that they understood the content of that essay. Messages that promote the idea that intelligence is a skill that can be improved through practice and effort significantly increased student achievement in Peru. The intervention led to a 0.14 standard deviation increase in math test scores, equivalent to four months of schooling, at a cost of less than $0.20 per student. eMBeD reached 50,000 students in an initial phase, and an additional 250,000 subsequently. Replicated interventions in  South Africa and Indonesia have had similarly promising results.

In 2016, the World Bank’s Development Impact and Evaluation (DIME) launched this programme to explore the use of entertainment media designed to change perceptions of social norms, achieve adoption, and sustain healthier behaviours at scale. The DIME programme is launching a series of experimental evaluations of games, apps and digital books aimed at improving self-efficacy and literacy outcomes among vulnerable populations in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

In December 2019, UNOCT established the International Hub on Behavioural Insights to Counter Terrorism as a UNOCT Programme Office in Doha, the State of Qatar. The Doha Hub was formally launched in December 2020 and will become fully operational in 2021. The Hub will perform three core functions: - Conduct and advance research in BeSci to better understand the drivers and factors contributing to radicalisation leading to violent extremism and terrorism; - Provide capacity-building assistance to Member States, regional organisations and civil society partners to develop and implement programmes, projects and initiatives that integrate behavioural insights to counter terrorism; and - Promote communication, outreach and partnerships to share knowledge, expertise, experiences and lessons learned on behaviourally informed counter-terrorism interventions. The Hub will leverage the expertise of local, regional and international counter-terrorism actors, and coordinate with the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact entities operating in the field for impactful and ‘all-of-UN’ programme delivery.

The Network, which aims to strengthen judicial integrity and prevent corruption, uses methods aimed at connecting judges, exposing existing and emerging challenges, and fostering a sense of belonging to be part of a global movement. The key example of the Network providing behavioural support is its practical package of the Judicial Ethics Training Tools, which sensitises judges to the wide spectrum of situations that may arise and aims to improve the behaviour of judges in the future, including through education on cognitive biases. To date, judges in over 60 jurisdictions have committed to using the initiative’s Judicial Ethics Training tools, with more than 6,800 members of judiciaries involved.

Rich Baby, Healthy Family uses both a smart phone-based app and a physical device in the form of a coin to promote saving. Users will be enrolled on the Rich Baby, Healthy Family scheme when they visit a registered health facility for antenatal care or they can register through the Mobile Money platform. As users add money to their account they can watch their savings “grow” through an animation in the form of a pregnant woman’s belly. For users that do not own a smartphone, they will make a mark on their coin punch card to track their progress each time they make a deposit to their mobile money savings account. The users will also receive regular reminders to save so that they can reach their goal. Once the goal is reached, money will be transferred from their savings account to the health facility to cover the costs of receiving maternal healthcare.

The Wild for Life Campaign aims to motivate citizens worldwide to support an end to the illegal wildlife trade. Leveraging BeSci principles such as social proof, normative feedback and precommitment, the campaign seeks to encourage individual pledges to advocate against the illegal wildlife trade and to make consumption choices that do not threaten species (e.g. not buying products made from protected wildlife, supporting companies that demonstrate sustainable supply chains). The campaign is supported by an influencer-driven, social-first strategy, seeking to leverage UNEP’s online strengths and network of celebrity champions, who have helped Wild for Life reach over a billion people and engage at least ten million as measured through likes, shares and follows.

IOM X seeks to move beyond raising awareness to affecting behaviour change. It does so by applying Communication for Development (C4D) and BeSci principles such as social influence and implementation prompts to encourage young people to make informed migration decisions. The IOM X model has been applied internationally, including most recently in West Africa where it is called WAKA Well. The model facilitates a process where a tailored multi-media campaign targeting a specified community is led by its youth and other community members, who direct audiences to informational material available in their communities. In order to approximately assess the impact of the campaigns on behaviour change, surveys measuring the knowledge, attitudes and practices among the target audience were conducted before and after the campaign.

Pulse Lab Jakarta ran a behavioural experiment in the form of an 8-week WhatsApp campaign aimed at disseminating a set of key messages to bank agents. The messages (i.e. graphics, comics, written text) were sent to shop owners (who were also bank agents), urging them to encourage their customers to save the change from purchases made at their shops in their bank accounts. The messages shared as part of the #TabunginAja (“#JustSaveIt”) campaign, were informed by BeSci and included setting specific goals and applying rules of thumb to prompt the target behaviour (e.g. to encourage agents to ask their customers to save their shopping change if the amount is less than USD0.35).

With the understanding that greater awareness could favor behavioral changes that help contain the spread of the pandemic, UNDP's Accelerator Lab in Uruguay carried out two experiments to validate the following hypothesis: the use of media and specific messages aimed at different population groups contributes to raising awareness about individual and collective responsibility to control the spread of the Coronavirus. On the one hand, in the first experiment (N = 171 people), two audiovisual campaigns that gained popularity globally were analyzed, sending different videos to different groups, one of German origin (emphasis on “stay at home” and “be a hero”), and another Spanish origin (emphasis "do not participate in parties," the negative impact of doing so). The main conclusions obtained were: • Regardless of having seen any of the videos, the population is considerably aware of the virus's contagiousness since 95% of people believe that they could be infected with COVID-19. • However, 79% consider that preventive health measures are easy to comply with, and 88% that their actions can influence other people's health. • Among those who consider that prevention measures are difficult to comply with (21%), the perception of having been exposed to situations with a risk of contagion increases. • The Spanish video caused greater changes in the perception of COVID than the German video. This could be due to the timelessness of "stay at home." On the other hand, in the second experiment (N = 200), a letter was sent through the Uruguayan National Mail service, between December 30th and 31st, along with a face mask. The homes' addresses in Montevideo were taken randomly. The letter called “Your future self” sought to appeal to a positive message regarding how people can act, particularly in celebrating the end of the year and the new year. Then, calls were made between January 5 and 6, 2021, to the households to ask a series of questions, both to the people to whom the letters were sent and the control group. The main findings identified in this experiment were: • The letter was well-valued by the population, particularly by adults over 65 years old. 44% of those who received it indicated that the letter contributed a lot to them. This assessment increases in those over 65 years old. • Adults over 65 who received the letter responded more moderately to how difficult it has been to comply with the recommended measures at the end of the New Year’s Eve. On the contrary, in the control and untreated group, the vast majority answered: “very easy.” • Older adults who receive the letter declare to a greater extent having reduced the number of people with whom they celebrated the New Year’s Eve compared to the previous year (67% treated group, 53% control group) • 90% of the treated group and 85% of the control group do not consider that situations of possible contagions were generated in their year-end celebration. The letter does not seem to affect the response. Still, it is highlighted that the perception of the risk of contagion could be more present in the population outside their homes and not so much in their intra-family activities. • The delivery of face masks can be valued positively and contribute to the prevention of infections, at least in the population approached by this experiment, where the majority (62%) used it less than a week after receiving it. It is important to note that various comments on the letter's impact have also been received in the process, and they are not included in this quantitative analysis. For example, people stated that they kept the letter, shared it with their family, or even left it next to the Christmas tree. These emotional factors are not negligible in a context where people must maintain certain behaviors that require effort. In this proof of concept that comprised both experiments, the relevance of contacting people when they are most likely to be receptive is concluded, with messages tailored to the circumstances, acting quickly. The temporality of the messages is key: it is not enough for the message to be clear. It must also be transmitted at the right time. In both experiments, it is possible to identify that the population tends to declare that it is relatively easy or very easy to comply with the recommended health prevention measures. This process was carried out in its entirety in one month and creates an opportunity to continue working in partnership with academics, organizations, and civil society to overcome the health emergency to achieve sustainable development goals.

In Uruguay, there is a gap in the use of the official part-time leave benefit between mothers and fathers. This is mainly due to a lack of information about laws, perceptions about costs associated with taking leave, and social believes that for the care of babies fathers are less necessary than mothers. This project aims to use behavioural interventions to understand how effective communication can help address these barriers and help to design policies to reduce the gender gap in care leave.

UNICEF is investing in the South African start-up 9Needs to develop the open source digital identity and personal information platform “Amply”. The system uses blockchain infrastructure and smart contracts to strengthen the registration, contracting, information and management systems of early childhood development programs. It helps children access services such as education, health care, social benefits. The data stored on Amply includes metadata (e.g. date, time, location) and “seals” of guarantee making it easy for external authorities to check the validity of the data, without accessing the data itself. UNICEF uses the data generated to tailor its services to be more predictive, precise, personalised and preventive.