THE CHALLENGE: Three years to 2015!
The Community Health Club Approach is a strategy which, over the past 15 years, has been able to change the behaviour of over half a million people in rural and urban communities mainly in Africa, and has succeeded in improving hygiene, sanitation which has reduced diarrhoea and many other preventable diseases. However there still much to be done, and little time left if the countries lagging behind are to meet the MDG Challenge to halve the number without safe water and sanitation by 2015 .
Only five countries in Africa are on track to achieve this…. and one of them, a tiny country in the heart of East Africa is set to not only achieve the MDGs but surpass them - Rwanda. We are proud to be contributing to this effort, assisting in the scaling up a community based environmental health promotion programme to national level so that it reaches every person in the country. Currently 85% of the 15,000 villages in Rwanda have started a Community Health Club, and training is soon to start that will effectively minimize preventable diseases caused by poor hygiene. Watch this space as the story unfolds…
From the Promotion of Health to Social Capital
‘The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself… if he comes into contact with his neighbour, and they with other neighbours, there will be an accumulation of social capital which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the whole community.’ - Hanifan, L.J. (1916)
The AHEAD model was first acknowledged to achieve high levels of behaviour change in 2002, (WSP-2002) and continues to attract attention by a publication by 20 Combined Agencies (2009) where this Zimbabwe Project was highlighted as best practice. The CHCs successfully compete with other development trends such as Social Marketing, and Community Led Total Sanitation (2009) to produce predictable results in positive behaviour change (Whaley & Webster, 2010). AHEAD Programmes adhere to recognised best practice in development, training local NGOs, International Agencies as well as capacity-building Environmental Health Technicians within Government in many developing countries to ensure sustainability.
Community Health Clubs have helped to improve the living conditions of the poorest of the poor in diverse situations: rural and urban communities in Zimbabwe, post conflict resettlements in Sierra Leone, refugee camps in Uganda, remote Moslem villages in Guinea Bissau and informal settlements in urban South Africa.
These projects have involved partnering with many other international organisations such as WaterAid, CARE international, Effective Interventions, Unicef, Mercy Corps, New Zealand Aid and Oxfam as well as international funding agencies, in particular DFID and Danida.
The AHEAD Model is a process of development which uses Health Promotion as an entry point into the communities based on the assumption that health is a universal issue which attracts all mothers. The discussion of health issues promoted a ‘common unity’ making it a functional community. After six months, the community start to make positive changes to their hygiene, sanitation and water facilities, which enable most preventable diseases (such a diarrhoea) to be reduced. Creating a demand for sanitation is one of the main challenges of the Millennium Development Goals, which is to halve the number of those without safe water and sanitation worldwide by 2015.
Applied Health Education leads on to skills training and income generation. Once there is reliable income, communities can afford to be altruistic, and take responsibility and care of their vulnerable families. With world recession, high unemployment and the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, the AHEAD Model, if properly implemented, can predictably ensure that communities become self-reliant and self motivated and escape the poverty trap.
OUR MISSION
To provide support to NGOs, Agencies and Government Ministries in developing countries to use a community-driven holistic approach to development using Community Health Clubs as a vehicle for change.
Our mission is to improve family health and living standards, through community managed health promotion through Community Health Clubs and School Health Clubs in order to:
1) Increase levels of hygiene knowledge and ensure behaviour change in order to eliminate all diseases that can be prevented by safe hygiene, particularly handwashing.
2) To increase access to sufficient quantity and quality of water for drinking and domestic purposes through self supply of new water sources, as well as rehabilitation and management of existing supply particularly for communities affected severe water shortages and desertification.
3) To decrease diarrhoea and other infectious diseases due to poor sanitation by ensuring, as a minimum, zero open defecation (ZOD) in all communities leading to self supply of family sanitation facilities.
OUR TARGET
To create an international association of partner organisations and individual practitioners dedicated to implementing and promoting the CHC approach, to sharing of lessons learned and the promotion of best practices based on empirical evidence so as to enhance the overall cost-effectiveness of development in the Third World.
Africa AHEAD has recently joined the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA), an informal network of partner organisations who share a common vision on sustainable sanitation. SuSanA came into existence in early 2007 and works as a coordination platform, working platform, sounding board, contributor to the policy dialogue on sustainable sanitation and as a “catalyst”.
WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP
Africa AHEAD is dedicated to assisting those interested in using the CHC approach to health and development, and providing the following services:
- Development of visual aids and health education materials
- Technical advice for water and sanitation programmes
- Design of projects using Community Health Clubs
- Training workshops for effective health promotion
- Research and evaluation of Health Promotion programmes
- Provision of information on the CHC Approach
In Memory of Josphine Mutandiro, Trustee of Zimbabwe AHEAD
It is with great sadness that we mark the passing away of Josephine Mutandiro, on 28th December, 2011, during treatment for Tuberculosis. Josephine devoted her life to alleviating the suffering of others, and was a truly committed development practitioner in a class of her own. She came to Zimbabwe AHEAD Organisation when it was newly formed in 1999 and brought with it a wealth of experience from her long years with Save the Children Fund. She has contributed her wisdom to our ethos, and her words have become our mantra. We will always remember her with joy as she would take the stage at a workshop, timing her entrance to proclaim her motto, ’Development is a Process’ and how everyone was spell bound by her rhetoric. It was heart-warming how she preached her message to the Community Health Clubs, and would dance before the multitudes inspiring them to progress, ‘step by step’. It is impossible to count the number of people she helped, not only in her work, but privately, counselling and assisting where ever she could.
Josephine taught herself how to grow and use herbs from books, and was one of the first to scale up the use of herbs for treatment in the rural areas. When she was District Coordinator in Rusape, the office hosted a constant stream of people coming for herbal treatment or counselling. Every morning at dawn she was in her garden, tending her plants which have been spread to gardens all over the country, from Bindura to Chiredzi. At the height of her work in 2006, when all else was falling apart, she had a network of Ward Coordinators in Makoni running a project with over 4,000 individual gardens, 1,000 communal gardens and an estimated 5,000 bee-keepers. So much income was generated and so much hope was raised by these projects! All these people knew and loved Josephine and will be affected by her passing, and we at Zim AHEAD want to be sure her memory survives and her work continues to expand.
It is sad that she leaves us just as the programme she loved, is scaling up throughout Zimbabwe, and as a Trustee in her retirement, she was to have witnessed the fruits of her labour and help guide the organisation onwards. Her life will be our guide. Josephine’s family must be proud to have such a wonderful mother, and we thank you for lending her to us for such a long time. We will find a way to honour her memory.
Josephine Mutandiro dancing in celebration, Makoni, 2006
