Community Mobilisation
Women’s groups are part of community mobilisation, which has been shown to make deep and lasting improvements to the health and wellbeing of communities. Community mobilisation achieves these improvements by empowering communities to identify and address important needs. Read more
In many poor communities women do not have regular access to other community members, nor are they given the opportunity to voice their opinions. Women’s groups are therefore particularly effective in bringing women with similar needs together to discuss topics that are of concern to them.
In the past few years, innovative studies have shown that women’s groups can lead to substantial improvements in newborn care. The Warmi Project in Bolivia reduced newborn mortality by nearly 50 per cent and the Makwanpur Study in Nepal led to a 30 per cent reduction in newborn deaths and a 78 per cent reduction in maternal deaths.
WCF programmes establish groups of 15-20 women, who meet on a monthly basis. Each group is supported by a local woman who has been selected and trained to act as a facilitator and run the group. The facilitator supports the group through a community action cycle model to identify and prioritise problems during pregnancy, childbirth and the newborn period, and to develop and evaluate strategies to overcome these problems. The model incorporates the following phases:
Phase 1: Identify and prioritise key health problems.
Phase 2: Design strategies to address the prioritised problems.
Phase 3: Implement the strategies.
Phase 4: Evaluate the strategies.
After this phase the community may decide to start the cycle again.
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