Mainstreaming Health-Environment initiatives into coastal communities

Title of the Initiative (project/programme): Mainstreaming Health-Environment initiatives into coastal communities

Project Overview:

Start date: 2007

End date:

Countries covered: Madagascar, Comoros, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya

Donor(s): USAID, MacArthur Foundation, The Rufford Foundation, Ernest Kleinwort

Charitable Trust, Vitol Foundation, Segal Family Foundation

Principal Investigator: Blue Ventures

Website: https://blueventures.org/conservation/community-health/

 

Aim/Objectives:

Poor health can restrict the ability of communities to engage in marine resource management

and is often a pressing priority that communities would like to address. Blue Ventures is

collaborating with respected health partners to increase access to services and develop health

promotion initiatives tailored to meet the needs expressed by coastal communities across a

variety of different contexts.

 

Key activities:

  • Blue Ventures facilitate diverse peer-led community outreach activities that encourage critical thinking about health-related behaviours and help to foster health-enabling social norms.
  • Interactive theatre workshops, storytelling sessions and small group discussions engage men, women and young people in topics ranging from maternal health to seaweed farming and fisheries management.
  • In collaboration with partners, we train and support local women to offer community-based family planning and other health services.
  • Community health workers offer counselling and products including condoms, contraceptive pills and injections in addition to mosquito nets, water purifying solution and oral rehydration salts for diarrhoea.

 

Main outputs:

The health-environment approach enables people to make their own family planning choices,

improving their health while equipping them with the skills they need to manage their natural

resources sustainably

Partners involved: Marie Stopes International, USAID Mikolo, PSI,