Global Health Nursing & Midwifery
For global health nurses interested in community-based participatory research
Global competition yields case examples of participatory action research for international health and development.
The Community Tool Box established the Out of the Box Prize to honor innovative approaches to promoting community health and development worldwide. The competition elicited 309 applications from 42 counties.
Applicants came in from around the globe - from the Americas to Zambia, and many countries in between. These projects reflect the abundance of work being done to improve community health and well-being around the world. Applicants' work included efforts to improve community health and development in a variety of creative ways -- addressing issues of importance to communities including the environment, HIV/AIDS, addressing Millennium Development Goals, rallying neighborhoods together for change, and improving the public's health.
Case examples of participatory action research are being harvested from these applications and shared with the world on the Community Tool Box website. To view the first ten of these case examples, we welcome you to visit the new Community Innovators' page of the Community Tool Box. We hope that you will check back often, as we will be featuring additional stories of inspiration and change throughout the year.
Information about the winners of the Out of the Box Prize:
Selected by an international panel of judges and then by public voting, the grand prize and second prize- winning projects are both located in Kenya in communities ravaged by civil unrest and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The $5000 grand prize winner is the Uhuru Child organization for its Jikaze Internally Displaced Persons Resettlement Village Project in Maai Mahiu, Central Province, Kenya. The project a sustainable re-settlement village for 900 internally displaced persons following the Kenyan post-election violence in 2008.
The village lacked consistent food and clean water supplies, access to health care, sufficient classrooms and funds for education. Half of the villagers were still living in tents. Within a year the group built 56 houses, planted 145 trees, sold 75 water filters at a subsidy, conducted three months of food relief in conjunction with the dispersal of 90 micro-finance loans and offered 22 educational scholarships to children in the community. As a result, every family has been moved out of tents and into houses, and no one has died of starvation, sickness or accident since the initiative began, according to Joe Heritage, Uhuru Child’s Project Manager. Since the distribution of the water filters, no child has become sick from water-borne diseases. Uhuru Child is an international community support organization that divides its efforts between America and Africa.
Uhuru Child tells their story in a beautiful and compelling video.
The $2,000 second prize winner, Fountain of Hope Youth Initiative, is a community-based social support organization that helps children, especially those affected by HIV/AIDS, have equal opportunity to compete academically and in extracurricular activities.
In 2007, the organization began to supply girls with sanitary pads in Kiambu, Kenya. Community workers discovered that the lack of sanitary pads was often the reason that girls from poor homes were struggling academically or even dropping out of school. The girls were often embarrassed and even ridiculed because of staining their uniforms during menstruation. Fountain of Hope organized donations of sanitary pads from community shops and supermarkets starting by asking for just a single packet of sanitary pads, according to James N. Waruiru, Fountain of Hope’s Project Coordinator. The initiative now supports more than 250 young women.
You can view a video the Fountain of Hope Youth Initiative made to describe their efforts.
According to Stephen B. Fawcett, director of the Work Group for Community Health and Development that sponsors the Community Tool Box, the sheer number of projects submitted to the contest testifies to how much community innovation is underway in the far corners of the world. “The power of communities to take action is a wonderful thing to behold. The competition made it possible for people around the world to share what works and to inspire others to take action.”
The Work Group for Community Health and Development is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre at the University of Kansas.
Posting courtesy of CBPR member, Christina Holt, MA | Associate Director for Community Tool Box Services; Work Group for Community Health and Development | http://communityhealth.ku.edu
Attached resource:
