GALVANISING COMMUNITY
ACTION
Community champions are local drivers of action for SRHR.
Many of the challenges we face can only be tackled together, when people commit to working with their community and building support for SRHR.
In Ethiopia, we work with communities champions to take action in support for SRHR. Having the support of community champions can foster healthy attitudes, and SRHR behaviour. Community engagement can broaden understanding of SRHR and mobilise essential resources and support. In Ethiopia, community champions have been instrumental in mobilising local resources for maternal health.
Galvanising community action in Ethiopia & the UK
454 community actors actively support safe motherhood in their community
US$24,260 in local resources mobilised to support safe motherhood in Amhara, Ethiopia
Why Yonas supports Maternity Waiting Homes
“Mothers are dying due to poor health uptake when it comes to childbirth and delivery” shares Yilmena Densa community leader Yonas. Yonas knows all too well the risk women in his community face when they opt to give birth at home without support from a skilled attendant. Community champions like Yonas are essential in fostering healthy decision-making when it comes to safe motherhood. Community support can shift individual behaviours, either by changing norms or individual knowledge and attitudes. Champions like Yonas and his peers can generate greater political will and mobilise essential local resources to support the little extras like food, sheets and electricity that are critical to the running of MWHs.
Mobilising local resources for maternal health
We engage community champions in Amhara to influence the support for maternity waiting homes operations and encourage women in their decision making. Local leaders we worked with mobilised 350,000 Ethiopian Birr (equivalent to US$2,600) worth or resources – through grain or money – to support maternity waiting homes. We work to include the voices of women in pregnancy and childbirth to encourage community support.
We noted differences in attitudes and behaviours on maternal health where community champions had been engaged. In areas where community champions mobilised resources, women were more likely to attend a maternity waiting home. Our mass media campaign broadened safe motherhood information to the wider community. Airing at a high-impact time five days a week for 21 weeks, we reached 9.8 million people across the entire Amhara region. Although less impactful than in-person activities, these high frequency messages supported our work to raise awareness at a much larger scale. Of the women surveyed, 52% had heard our project messages on safe motherhood and MWHs.
Stories of Choice
See who else we’re reaching
Women
Health Workers
Young People
Photo Credit
Banner Image: SafeHands | Nancy Durrell McKenna | Ethiopia | 2007