Community Monitoring in Health Resources for the Practitioner |
A. Explain the purpose of the Activity
The facilitators ask the group whether they know why they have all gathered. Briefs the group about the decisions taken during the last meeting? Take permission to start the information gathering activities. B. Starting Off - Drawing the Map of the Village 1. Can any of you make a map of your village? Lets try. 2. Any volunteers? Let’s first start by marking the boundaries – First identify where is north, south, east and west, mark it. Now what’s to the North, let’s draw it. What’s to the south - let’s draw it and so on to first mark the boundaries of the village. Where are the fields - Where are the houses? Any important roads ? Any other landmarks that we would like to put up? (different items are to be marked with different colours.) Now lets start marking the neighbourhoods and lanes? Why don’t people from different neigbourhoods mark their own area? So is this how our village looks? C. Identifying the Cases, Problems and Resources Can we remember the households which have had illnesses/health problems in the last one year? Lets mark those houses (Try to elicit information about chronic communicable diseases). What were the problems? (one can use different colours for different diseases). Ask which are the household had delivery in last one year. Where do people go for treatment? What are the main problems people face in seeking treatment? Are there some individuals or families in the neighbourhood who help others in cases of illness and disease? Are there any stories? D. Winding Up Now we know a lot about what happens around illness care in the village. If any of you thinks there is some information that is left out please get in touch with us. We will also meet for some other discussions in the next couple of days. Let’s see if we can all get together and plan to make peoples health better. Thank you all for coming. Time frame - The mapping gives us a clear picture of cases/diseases. It is a very engaging and participatory exercise and many require more than two hours. The participants must be briefed and mentally prepared about the timings. |