A systematic approach
Mr Kevin Hughes, NSGA Programme Manager for West Africa, greatly values the Self Assessment tool. “We use it systematically. It leads to massive community participation, and especially to women’s participation. In this traditionally male society, the women’s voices were lost and the Self Assessment has made it heard.”
Mr Kevin Hughes emphasises that this tool also provides information about issues that are difficult to measure, such as the quality of communication and ownership of the fight against malaria by the communities. “It is a way to know if our interventions have a real impact. I was impressed by the sense of ownership I saw in the communities, the level of involvement of children in the schools, and the confidence of the women who now speak so confidently before the chiefs.”
So in The Gambia, a powerful social change process has been implemented since 2006, supported at the highest state level by the President himself and the Ministry of Health.
And from then on, the struggle against malaria could acquire a new energy.