Incentivising community health Volunteers

Community volunteers are critical in behaviour change initiatives not jsut for health but across various areas beyond health. They are used vividly in my country Uganda during political campaigns and furnished with materials such as t shirts, posters and key messages to pass on to the electrorate. The same is true when it comes to health promotion thousands of these community volunteers are identified, sometimes trained by goverment (Ministry of Health) but hardly facilitated. That is left to NGOs that struggle to provide refereher trainings and a periodic stipend.

As a result many are inactive and the few that active ones are competed for by the NGOs. This increases the stipende to be offered, raises the risk of double counting among others. This is compounded by the fact that the resource persons are left overburdened by the streching performance targets set by the NGOs that are desparate to achive the donor targets. This situation greatly reduces the effectivenes of the volunteers leaving many furstarted and asking wether they add value.

Key question is if the community volunteers are greatly recognised and used with razor sharp effectiveness during political campigns why question wether they are helpful in SBCC for health. Let us replicate our political mobilisation experiance and apply it in the realm of health for increased community volunteer effectiveness and sustainability.