Community Mobilization

Having an impact on household and neighborhood decision making is achieved through the core of LAMB community activities:  household visits and women’s group meetings.  While seeking to increase opportunities to work more with men and in-laws (who hold the highest status in households), women’s groups have been very successful in addressing issues of importance to them.

The women’s groups follow a strategy called Participatory Action Research, which promotes learning-by-doing as an alternative to traditional awareness raising (health teaching) activities.  Groups have successfully advocated with local government for improved roads and street lighting (in towns) which allow women to travel to antenatal clinics as well as young women to return from school in safety at evening time.

Community capacity indicators (CCI) are determined and assessed by the groups themselves.  More than 50% of the groups scored themselves as capable of independent functioning, and the number of groups grew from 50 to 400 in the last 1.5 years, as more local women wish to gain the benefits the groups deliver.

Health promotion is a key activity of LAMB, mainly carried out by the Community Health and Development Program team, CHDP.

The biggest focus of the work is on women and children, with the objectives of reducing the number of maternal deaths related to childbirth, and reducing the number of child deaths and disabilities.  There is however also a very significant element of general health improvement work.

Health promotion is carried out at several levels, in several ways:

In the Home:  Village Health Volunteers, who have all received one week’s initial full time training at LAMB, followed by further specific training, visit all homes in their village at least once per month with health promotion advice.  At the same time, as appropriate, they carry out other duties such as checking weight growth of infants, publicise free treatment, and act as first line identifiers of significant health problems of individuals suggesting referral to treatment.

At Village Groups:  At meetings of village members, such as those for micro-finance operations, basic health promotion training is given.