Attachments
Project: Communication for Cholera Prevention and Control
Donor: UNICEF
Sector: Communications for Development
C4D/Crossing Sectors: WASH, Health
Target Area: Rada’a District, Al-Baidha Governorate
The project in partnership with UNICEF, focuses on improving knowledge and awareness to enable behavior change and adoption of the positive practices for cholera prevention and control among beneficiaries in the targeted area.
Community Volunteers (CVs) and Youth were trained on key disease-preventing practices and community engagement techniques to conduct awareness raising sessions and encourage community members to adopt preventative practices against Cholera and Acute Watery Diarrhea. Their awareness raising activities continue effortlessly to conduct awareness raising and encourage community members to adopt preventative practices against Cholera.
Along with the awareness raising sessions and door to door visits, Community Volunteers could not simply ignore the appalling amounts of waste accumulated around the visited neighborhoods. They decided to take action into their own hands and started to conduct small-scale clean-up campaigns accordingly.
The support and cooperation received from local authorities and members of the targeted community inspired our Youth and Community Volunteers to continue their efforts and help clean up the city in order to prevent the spread of cholera and other infectious diseases.
Situation: Al-Jabni, a residential area with an adjacent open-space land used by households and the surrounding stores and restaurants as the main waste-dumping point.
This space has been accumulating waste since 2006 with irregular cleanup and minimal waste collection by the relevant entities that resulted in utterly unbearable foul smells and dangerous disease repositories in the city.
Actions Taken: Community Volunteers started communicating with Mr. Jamal Al-Abd, a key figure in the community, who in exchange extended an invitation to the District’s Manager and Head of the Cleaning Fund to visit the area.
Members of the local authority accepted the invitation and attended the following day to witness the site. They were overwhelmed with the situation and vowed to eliminate the waste and do whatever it took to help keep the area clean.
“I felt that they were sincere!” stated Community Volunteer, Yahya Al-Nosairi, referring to the way members of the local authority reacted upon witnessing the accumulated waste. He acknowledged having no expectations and being somewhat skeptic that any action will be made by them to help in the clean-up campaign.
He was extremely excited to see a tractor and a pick-up truck early in the morning the following day to start the cleaning process. It was then that he regretted his skepticism stating his “realization that this was a collaborative effort, a partnership between members of a single community genuinely working together for the good of all”.
This activity was one of many activities under the clean-up campaign initiated by the Youth and Community Volunteers conducted in Rada’a District, under RRD’s UNICEF-funded project.