The role of non-formal education 339 theory at the organizational level. According to Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura 1987) , behaviour change is enhanced when individuals are trained to exercize influence over their own behaviours and their social environment. They can best make such changes when they experience interventions to heighten their awareness and knowledge, along with enhanced resources and social support. Bandura conceptualized the basic elements of social cognitive theory as consisting of personal determinants in the form of cognitive, affective, and biological factors, behaviour and the environment. In this article we examine how various programmes have applied this theoretical framework to behaviours related to HIV/AIDS, by exposing participants to interventions designed not only to promote safer sex guidelines, but also to develop individual skills and self-beliefs that would enable them to reduce risks in the face of counteracting influences (Bandura 2004) . The second theoretical framework used in this research combines power and social influence. The social psychological study of power and influence originated in the groundbreaking work of Kurt Lewin (1941) , who considered power to be the possibility of inducing force on someone else. More formally, it is the maximum force that Person A can place on Person B divided by the maximum resistance that B can offer. French and Raven (1959) further developed this conceptualization of power and social influence; they defined influence as a force one person (the agent) exerts on someone else (the target) to induce a change in the target, including changes in behaviours, opinions, attitudes, goals, needs, and values. Social power was later defined as the potential ability of an agent to influence a target. Raven (1965) further classified power according to the base from which it comes and listed six types: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, expert and informational power.