1 / 5

Faith and Public Health

Faith and Public Health. Working to save lives and improve health in partnership with Faith leaders in Sierra Leone Sharing learning from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation Faiths Act programme focusing on Malaria Prevention messaging Presentation to Health NGOs on 17 th January 2012.

damita
Download Presentation

Faith and Public Health

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Faith and Public Health Working to save lives and improve health in partnership with Faith leaders in Sierra Leone Sharing learning from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation Faiths Act programme focusing on Malaria Prevention messaging Presentation to Health NGOs on 17th January 2012

  2. TBFF in Sierra Leone Purpose of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation: Faith is a force for good in the 21st century. With education and learning, together with joint social action, people and organisations of different faiths can come together to make a difference! In SL: harness the fantastic inter faith approach for the common good – tackling the biggest killer: MALARIA New programme – launched in May 2011 TBFF supports faith leaders to be part of the fight against malaria in their communities by providing materials and funding for training Inter faith & partnership approach yielded results so far Almost 200 faith leaders trained as MFAs (Malaria Faith Ambassadors) and more planned, over 35,000 people been part of malaria messaging activities, 2400 MFCs (Malaria Faith Champions) trained by MFAs to do house to house visits and 25,000 families reached so far. Lots of learning and successes in working with faith leaders to share

  3. Why work with Faith Leaders? 90% to 95% of the public regularly attend a Church or Mosque Faith Leaders are listened to- they are credible, respected members of the community. Faith leaders are in a position of power and can galvanise action (e.g. community clean ups, enlisting volunteers etc) Working through and with a ‘structure’ within the community can create sustainability. Faith is about supporting each other and improving health …. References in the bible and Koran refer to health Health promotion is part of the core responsibility of Imams and Pastors and is generally embedded in their daily work.

  4. What Works? Faith leaders as trainers and developers - Involving people at every step of the way Stick to simple messages – even 5 is too many! Plan to train in inter faith – bring the community together Work in Partnership - practically Ensure the programme is holistic – can involve people who cant read or write Evaluation important – need to ensure people can demonstrate success. Give people recognition for what they do (non-monetary: badges, stickers, certificates, awards etc) Ensure that faith leaders are the advocates for the programme. Sierra Leoneans working with each other, owning and leading the programme not NGOs! Have a system for regular feedback.

  5. Taking this Approach Forward Look for people within the public health organisations who are also faith leaders Start the partnership as early as possible with some key champions who can act as influencers Work with the IRC, NMCPand other key partners – ie your training team to reflect your partnership and agree respective roles Recognise the enormous commitment that people can make and value this Take small steps and don’t overload people Learn from what has worked before! Build on existing success in SL Have some idea about longer term sustainability! Good Luck

More Related