Aid in Action

Nusa Village

Community Committed: No Incentives Needed

Banda Aceh | Tuesday, November 22, 2005

 

The Province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam poses big challenges for any organization working in the tsunami-affected communities as the emergency-response phase shifted to reconstruction and rehabilitation. The initial assistance of providing “handouts” of basic daily needs, cash for work programs, free medical aid, provision of temporary housing, etc. has now shifted to the physical rebuilding of essential public infrastructure and rehabilitating of community livelihood and self reliance.

One of the components of HSP (Health Services Program) -USAID funded Maternal and Neonatal Health Program- is community mobilization to create a conducive environment for positive health behavior change. The main strategy of this component is to encourage community participation to become self reliant by providing assistance and facilitation for communities to establish their own health committee or health team.

Motivating community members to participate in self assessment, identification of problems and finding possible solutions is a challenging task at the best of times. It is especially difficult in Aceh where the communities have experienced a major trauma. Taking this into account, by empowering the communities as part of the rehabilitation process, the HSP community mobilization team has successfully encouraged community participation, inspiring confidence among the community and establishing grass-root commitment for self help.

Let’s take a look at one community mobilization process in November 22, 2005 in Nusa village, Lhoknga sub-district, Aceh Besar district. The process started with an orientation session for the community leaders to explain the HSP community-based health program. The community leaders included the head of the village (Keuchik), youth leaders and village midwives. After the explanation and discussion the community leaders expressed commitment to participate in the community-based health program starting with forming an ad-hoc team. The small ad-hoc team of volunteers was then established, comprising 5 women. The HSP Community Mobilization team reiterated throughout that community participation is expected to be on voluntary basis. The team members understood that they do not get compensation or monetary incentives. Their task was to facilitate a need assessment exercise with community members.

Their commitment to work as voluntary team members was tested.  Out of the five who initially volunteered for the ad hoc team, only two remained. They are Rosmiati and Nurmaliza (below), both are village health cadres. Rosmiati, a mother of two reasserted her commitment by saying, “I have been a health cadre since I was young. I have never received any incentive because this work is for the community. It’s satisfying because I am helping other people and I am learning new things as I go.”

Even though short of personnel, the two women successfully facilitated the community in doing the community needs assessment. With only two of them, the work was indeed challenging. It was good that during the process Nurhayati (right) spoke up. She had previously escaped the attention of the community mobilization team. Beside being a religious teacher (ustadzah) she turned out to be a community mobilization motivator for PKK (Family Welfare Movement). However, she declined to become a formal member of the ad-hoc team and instead prefer to assist in an informal way by encouraging community members to participate in the process.

Despite her young age, she seemed confident and charismatic. When she spoke, the community listened intently. She was full of enthusiasm. Even though it was raining, she still came to the praying hall to encourage people to attend the planned important meetings on health issues. Her effort to motivate the community proved to be effective. Despite the rain a crowd came to the praying hall to hear and talk about health problems and potential solutions.

Nusa village demonstrated that despite the absence of incentive, a community can be motivated to be self reliant on health issues. The ad-hoc team has successfully facilitated the community to establish a Community Health Committee with a vision and a health program which included a plan to establish Desa Siaga.