BRAINSTORMING: Promoting Health Education via a Sports Program
Status: 
Time needed:
Two weeks or more
Step:
1
Arrow Web Hospital is currently considering adding a sports program to target youth ages 11-35 (Bramuel tells me all in this age group are considered youth in Kenya) in the local community. The goal of this program would be to use it as a means to promote health education, mainly around the topic of HIV/AIDS awareness, but also have more obvious benefits such as promoting teamwork and providing an opportunity for exercise.
For this task, we'd like you to help us brainstorm ways that we might approach a program such as this. What is needed? What type of associated costs may be incurred? Are there any hidden costs? How would we promote a sports program? Can we develop materials to help the hospital support the program? How many footballs would be needed? Would team jersey's be a benefit? What other equipment would be necessary?
Let's put our heads together and see what kinds of ideas we can come up with to help the hospital get this new program off the ground.
The background information of Kayole-Soweto on nabuur mentions a population of 798,000 people, majority below poverty level, earning less than a dollar a day.
Before a Communication strategy can be formulated, it will be necessary to have a more precise idea about the demographic aspects. Is the program aimed at a population of nearly 1 million people? Or is the Arrow Web Hospital active only in communities in the immediate neighborhood, where the target population could be much, much lower?
It would help neighbours provide specific solutions, if a detailed brief of the target population could be posted on this thread.
Vijai
Vijai-
Welcome to Kayole-Soweto! It's good to see you here and contributing to our discussions.I believe from talking with Bramuel that they intend to focus on the immediate area around the hospital. The slum area is huge and there are a large number of people who reside there. The hospital works in the Kayole and Soweto areas.
Jennifer
Thanks, Jennifer.
For the Communication strategy to be meaningful, focussed, and effective, it is necessary for the village to first understand that a 'one-size-fits-all' does not apply here, since the approach to be followed to target a population of 1 million people (780,000 is nearly 1 millon) would be totally different from the approach required to target, say 1000, or 10,000 people.
I guess Bramuel may need to activate a study at the local level and provide basic demographic data, which must include - males, females, age-wise population, profession, literacy, income levels, etc, etc.
Unless these specifics appear on this thread, any discussion on the Communication strategy would be merely general in nature, and will be counter-productive, since this approach will not benefit the community on the ground in that region.
Vijai
Vijai-
I think you may be thinking about this as something much more complicated than intended. Arrow Web Hospital is a small community health center. It has 19 beds and a small staff. They have a community health team (also small) who go out into the local area and have provided training/immunizations at schools, etc. The hospital is very well aware of the needs of their local community and has been actively engaged in outreach for the past several years. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that having a discussion around a sports program would be counter-productive. Bramuel hopes to learn from others who may have implemented similar programs and take these ideas back to the hospital staff/board for review. They will be the ones determining what is best for the hospital and what will work in their community and have been very successful to date in working this way.
They are thinking of hiring a coach, they need some footballs and plan to integrate health education into the sports program. The target is youth 11-35. The hospital needs to remain focused on what is there for, this is intended to be a small program, not targeting a million people. There are simply not the funds or manpower to handle such a program. This may develop into more down the road, but for now, it's a simple means to reach the local youth and begin teaching them about health issues that will impact their lives.
I hope that helps-if I am missing something and still not addressing your concerns or explaining myself well, please let me know. I am sure that Bramuel will explain more next time he logs in as well.
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer
There are already many groups doing this around the world, there will be some in Kenya, and also someon Nabuur. Has Bramuel been in contact with any other groups? If we know who he has talked to, it will save us posting info on the same ones!
Mary
Hi All
Thank you all for your contrubition Vijal as Jennifer has mention alot on her replies to you the Hospital is not looking to have a sports program,but throuph our exprience we have come to realize that by starting this small program on sports will anable us reach more youths than we are reaching now and our target is not to know how many people will be reached but our aim is to target youths between age of 11-35. I hope this will make you uderstand what we are trying to do.
Mary for now we have not known any of the group that is doing this and if you have known any let us know them and we will be very happy.
Hopping to hear more from you people.
warm regard
Bram
Hi Simiyu,
In case you have read my previous 3 posts in this thread, I have stressed on the fact that demographic information is one of the starting points for any successful communication effort. In the absence of fairly precise demographic information, any communication effort can be neutralized.
In case you are trying to reach out to people in the 11-35 age group, it becomes your business to at least know how many people in your target population fall in this age group, what are their literacy levels, what are their earnings, etc, etc.
As I can understand from your post above, you feel that this demographic information is not required. In such a case, probably only a banner outside the hospital would be enough so that any youth of your target age might notice it and be aware of your program. But if the youth are not literate, even this banner will not work.
For anything beyond this, you will need the demographic information that I have repeatedly stressed upon in all my posts above in this thread.
I shall be happy to respond if you have any specific questions on this matter.
With best wishes
Vijai
Jennifer,
A clear conclusion from your post above is that this program is aimed at a small fraction of the community that interfaces with Arrow Web Hospital. Hence it would be safe to assume that a communication strategy for the masses is not involved.
This narrows the focus in the next logical step to identify areas of communication for this small local community. Here again the demographic details are required, as mentioned in my post above.
As an example, it will be a complete waste of time and resources to rely on printed communication if the local community is not literate enough.
Another example - if the local community is struggling with issues of low income etc, the communication strategy with this group would necessarily be a lot different from another group which is reasonably better off in comparison.
For each element of demographic data, it is possible to think of the various possibilities as in the examples above. Any errors made in the demographic data will completely neutralize the communication effort.
It will be necessary to repeat here - a fairly precise demographic data is one of the starting points of any communication effort.
To again stress on the issues in my previous posts, 'one-size-fits-all' does not apply, and any communication strategy will need to be tailor-made to suit even this small group interfacing with this hospital.
I can understand the difficulties at the hospital with trying to formulate a communication strategy, since this is a deviation from their normal work. Perhaps only a general discussion is desired by the hospital at this stage, in which case a few internet searches could provide a good idea about the basic issues involved.
Specific questions could then be posted on this thread, so that a meaningful, totally-focussed, and time-bound action plan could be created through interactions with the neighbours.
Vijai
Hi Vijai
Thank you fo your concern I really appreciate your contrubition
I think if you read my massege above you will understand abit of what the hospital is looking for.
thank you and looking forward to hear more advices
Bram
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i am a hard working young man and i am in a village and my village lack finacial so i am here .
Hi Jennifer
Check out Alive And Kicking http://www.aliveandkicking.org.uk/whatwedo.php
They work in Kenya, providing footballs and health education materials to schools and community groups. May be able to assist.
There are plenty of similar programmes going on around the world, am sure there are others in Kenya
There are at least two Nabuur villages focusing on sport linked with education, but neither of them is really active.
Makadara (in Nairobi)
Garden-2 (in Zambia)
I think I have contact details for both their LRs, so will see if they are interested in sharing info with Bram. If so I will put you and Bram in touch wit them.
Mary
Hi Bram- I facilitate Garden(1) Village here on Nabuur and and Mulenga (LR) has very effectively established sporting programmes for the disadvantaged and street kids of Garden (Zambia). These programes have the dual impact of promoting team sports, exercise and educting the kids around key issues such as AIDS and the imprtnacne of education. He has also been effective in getting funding, linking with other similar groups, and sourcing sporting equipment.
I will ask him to provide some advice to you next time he is on-line.
Regards Carolyn
Carolyn, that would be great! Bramuel wants to learn what he can from others who have been successful.
Thank you for the offer-
Jennifer
Hi all,
Just so you know, Bweyogerere village is promoting a culture of sorting waste before disposal through sports (football and netball) among existing youth clubs that play football or have informal regular meetings.
We are working in one parish that has 07 cells with about 12 football clubs. We have weekly meetings with club leaders and have been meeting with individual clubs at their play grounds to introduce the concept to them and understand their issues and concerns on waste management. We have also given each youth club a registration form so we know the number of youths involved in each club and their current occupation.
The above category largely comprises youths out of school. As for youths in school, these can be reached directly in schools where we intend to establish school health clubs.
The female clubs are dormant at the moment so we are asking their male counterparts to activate them. We here in the past there were netball clubs and most members in those clubs are not necessarily youths.
After the exercise of identifying youth clubs is complete, the next step will be to identify peer educators and train them on proper waste management.
At the momemnt we are working with government technical staff from the town council to prepare simple training materials for the peer educators.
Could this approach be dopted by Bramuel?
As for HIV-AIDS, after training the peer educators, they will need to have regular meetings and the component of voluntary counselling and testing should also be introduced at this stage. In addition post test clubs for youths who are HIV+ should also be introduced. Bramuel will then need to think of increasing access to ARVs for youth that need them (CD4 count less than 200).
I will look up training materials for Adolescent Sexual and Reprodcutive Health (ASRH) that has a strong component on HIV-AIDS. I know these were used by AMREF in the past. If I can i will also send Jeniffer a simple project design.
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Walude
This is great, Walude !
You have built your communication strategy after ascertaining, assessing, and researching the demographic profiles of your target population.
Vijai