Community Empowerment for health

Community Empowerment for health

I find the term “empowerment” sometimes difficult to define in its true sense for several reasons. It is used mostly by the development pundits who claim themselves to be the experts of designing and implementing development programs. I could not also simply remain untouched and unmoved by this term because of my long involvement in a Swiss funded bilateral rural health development project in the mid eastern hilly districts. I remained initially hesitant whether I should put together successful stories of its working approach and share with the development pundits or not. However, my inner conscience kept me pushing hard to do so.

Empowering the individuals, groups and organizations, who were considered to be the working partners or stakeholders, was the key working approach that remained to be the most challenging task for the project. Identifying the real working partners at the grass root level who were individually or collectively involved in providing health services to the rural population and bringing them within the working approach of the project was another crucial thing. Where and how to start the empowerment process of these working partners was another concern. Likewise, the synergy affect of the successful approach on the working partners and or on the adjoining working areas found to be equally important in terms of scaling up of the project activities. The project had to, however, move ahead to achieve its set objectives and goal.

Detailed training curricula were specifically developed for all the stakeholders with the aim of strengthening their management capabilities so that they would, in turn, be able to provide health services to the rural people effectively and efficiently. Group-wise management training were accordingly designed and implemented for each group of working partners, namely, mother group members, female community health volunteers, traditional healers, traditional birth attendants, VDC level health workers, health teachers and district level officials to enhance their management knowledge and skills. Mother groups were facilitated to analyze, identify and prioritize their common health problems using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools and prepare action plans to implement health related activities to overcome their health problems.

They were provided with necessary construction materials on a cost ratio basis to be born by them and the project. It had perfectly worked out and had created strong ownership feeling towards their completed health projects. Overwhelming community participation was possible towards the successful completion of all the community initiated activities. Such collaborative efforts had saved lives of many children and old people by chasing a number of water borne and skin diseases away. It is really pity to see that these kind of successful working approaches found to be disregarded by the concerned authorities. 

Rai Biren Bangdel

Maharajgunj, Kathmandu