Would you please help us establish more lifesaving, life-changing community health groups this Christmas? Your gift can help more women, children, and young people to survive and thrive.
It’s needed more than ever.
Every 2 minutes a woman dies in pregnancy, childbirth or shortly after birth. Every 4 seconds a child under 5 dies.
The cause of these deaths is preventable or treatable; diseases such as malaria; complications in labour such as haemorrhage; or a lack of support for their sexual and reproductive health needs.
Your gift this Christmas could bring women and men together to work collectively to find the solutions to their problems.
Your gift of £50 could train a strong, inspirational woman like Ruth to lead her local community health group
Your gift of £30 could enable six women to attend their local community health group for a whole year
Your gift of £15 could allow three teenage girls to join their local health groups using radio in rural Malawi
Poverty, distance to health facilities, lack of information, inadequate services and cultural beliefs prevent women and newborns from accessing and receiving the critical care they need.
Health education is most effective and empowering if it involves dialogue and problem solving, rather than message-giving. Our community health groups bring people together, effectively enabling women and men to take collective action to address health problems with locally sourced solutions.
Community health groups work. They can halve maternal mortality, reduce neonatal mortality by a third and increase uptake in contraception by a quarter.
With help from our supporters, we are exploring now exploring how community health groups can address wider challenges faced by women and children in remote communities.
Tests include whether groups can empower rural communities to address: unintentional childhood injuries, family planning uptake, adolescent sexual and reproductive health rights through radio broadcasts and discussions, and health service access for people with disabilities.
Group leader Ruth explains how they work: “In the group we discuss the most serious problems facing our community and work out strategies to deal with them.
“We have organised households to paint words and phrases on their homes about the problems we face, so everyone can think about how to solve them in the community.”
Florida, a former group supervisor, says, “Setting up health groups empowers communities to take actions on issues that concerns their lives and enhances behaviour change and good practice.
“Community health groups bring about change. There is power with among community members which just need to be stirred up.
“Community members have untapped abilities. They have the capacity to deal with their social, economic and health well-being.
“The group approach enables people to realize their problems, draw solutions and take actions."
Selicia, a mother in Malawi, adds, “During my first pregnancy I delivered at home, had complications because I had an early labour, and my baby was severely jaundiced.
“I’ve been coming to the group meetings for six months. We learn about the importance of antenatal care, they encourage deliveries at health centres. I’ve learnt about the dangers of delivering at home. Women are helped. Pregnancy complications are avoided."
Your support this Christmas could train more inspiring leaders like Ruth, provide more support for supervisors like Florida and transform the lives of more mothers like Selicia.
Thank you for enabling us to put in place life-changing solutions, successes and impacts.
We wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and happy holiday season.