The project theme ‘Acting to Keep Children Safe and Alive’ illustrates the need for proactive as well as preemptive steps to keep children safe and help increase their chances of survival in their infancy stage and beyond. This project is aimed at empowering people to take action in improving their own health and the health of their family at home, starting at birth. It also gives the public and participants an opportunity to empower or guide people through policy and technology changes, as well as introduce them to new health and safety options as they become available in a community context.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Kwale
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The programme will be directed to the youth, men and women of the community between the ages of 21-40 years to help bring about an awareness of behaviours that promote child-maternal survival.Every child deserves to live to the fullness of life safely and having seen the present day challenges of infant mortality, this prompted the desire to bring public awareness which can avert this child-maternal mortality situation. As a community, which places a high value on children’s welfare, it is yet to effectively utilize the opportunities available through citizen media to effectively disseminate information for infant survival awareness to community members.With a shared interest in child-maternal survival, it is my desire to make the voices of this commununity to be heard using citizen media.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Stanley Tabowei https://www.facebook.com/tabowei.stanley
Maureen Iyasele https://www.facebook.com/maureen.iyasele
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
We will be constantly engaged in lasting, mutually beneficial contents that impact lives going forward, thus, our focus on the following support contents which have been identified as sustainable contents to be considered. The news, stories and other content created will focus on the steps to helping pregnant women or nursing mothers on the following issues – drug abuse, counterfeit medicines, substandard drugs, behaviours that promote healthy pregnancy, unsafe sleep conditions, nutrition and hygiene conditions aimed at increasing awareness of specific health issues and encouraging citizen involvement community wide. The participants will incorporate text-based content with image-centric content making the content easily comprehensible and serving to simplify their shared experiences.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
The project team, in line with its commitment which reflects the ethics and social values of the community focuses on community-based, long-term child-maternal care development, will seek to collaborate with DESOPADEC in extending its social welfare work within the community through community strengthening programmes, NAFDAC to widen its campaign against substandard drugs, Ndokwa West Local Government Council for grass root acceptance, local public primary healthcare centres and maternity centres that can help contribute to the integration and sustainability of the project leading to a better child-maternity healthcare and education experience.The community stakeholders are key relationships which I have established and further arrangements have been made to successfully achieve this.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
The project intends to train five youths, five married men and ten married women who will establish a strong network. Their participation will be sought through community advocacy and town hall meetings.To sustain the culture of infant survival in this community along with participants’ participation, participants will be motivated, empowered with the requisite knowledge of child-maternity care, institutionalize public grassroots participation in the project-making processes, and creating opportunities for participation in accredited workshops or seminars on child-maternity care for participant.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
The major technologies, tools, and media which will be focused on will be mobile phone, file and archive management tools, digital video, digital photography along with multimedia and illustrated posters to teach about child-infant mortality information, layout/design of project publications, and development of volunteer recruitment and training materials. The team for this project is composed of dedicated professionals with a wide range of experiences concerned with issues related to social, health, information technology and educational development. we are able to foster effective people management and on-the-job learning experiences to lead the way in educating participants on management and technical skills to help them grow and to spread best practices, new ideas and strong networks
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The workshop will held at Fonitronix ICT centre in Kwale which is equipped with thirty functional desktop systems to be used for practicals by the participants. It has a functional working space with 30 desktop computers, UPS for each computer, chairs and tables for 40 participants. Internet access is via a VSAT. In addition to this, there are five HSPA USB modems available. The center is an easily accessed event venue for group of this size.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
Having conducted several project inspection in the community aimed at advancing social partnerships, providing human capital development, infrastructural development, and generally contribute to the community quality of life which has helped to get valuable community and other stakeholder input.
In view of this, I have maintained strong and mutually beneficial relationships with the community which has helped generate community support, loyalty and good will. Also, I have built a community relationship that will ensure future benefical partnership or collaboration.
I believe that my track record and management competencies qualify me to make a success of this project. The other team members who will be involved are highly skilled and experienced.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
In line with our commitment to support the crucial role the health sector plays in promoting child-maternal survival in the community, the project team has identified the specific challenges expected to be faced when planning and implementing the project as follows:
1. Lack of Electricity
2. Lack of good child-maternal care practices
3. Poor nutrition and hygiene
4. Technical inefficiency
5. Poor network signal for communication tower base
The above challenges are no doubt surmountable, and these obstacles will be overcomed through the following actions.
1. The use of an alternative power supply source
2. Control/containment activities
3. Improving bio-security
4. Training and health education
5. Care management information
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
The project evaluation will consist of formative evaluation, qualitative in nature, in which interviews along with open-ended questionnaires and summative evaluation which is quantitative and commences with the establishment of baseline data at the beginning of the project using a random sample.
The determination of achieving success will be based on fundamental observable indicators which include early integration of objectives, ongoing communication, proficiency in new or existing techniques, improved development outcomes and adoption of process by other beneficiary groups.
By doing this the project team can strengthen their relationship with communities.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
Project Timeline:
Activities
Recruit/Hire
May 5th 2014 – May 16th 2014
Training
May 26th 2014 – August 29th 2014
Collect data
October 2nd 2014 – October 23rd 2014
Analyze data
October 27th 2014 – November 10th 2014
Writing and revising report
November 17th 2014 – December 8th 2014
Develop print materials
December 10th 2014 – December 19th 2014
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
COMMUNITY ADVOCACY
$200
EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLLIES
Hardware
Projector
$400
INTERNET ACCESS
$250
WORKSHOP COSTS
$470
TRANSLATION
$100
UTILITIES
Generator set along with diesel
$180
TRAVEL
$160
COORDINATOR EXPENSES
$300
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Other than the microgrant funding, Rising Voices could help provide the following to ensure the success of the project and help make inroads to gain continual community support and further long-term commitment.
1. Watermarking Software
2. Garmin GPS
3. Duplicating machine
4. Administrative support
5. Website development/hosting
6. Digital Voice Recorder
8. Fundraising software
Contact name
Kingsley Udemeh