Header Photo: WHO/TBP/Gary Hampton
Building Citizen Advocacy in South Africa
South Africa training
Between 24 and 27 August 2009 an advocacy training was held in Western Cape for 19 people from the NGO, public and private sectors as well as individual former TB patients/advocates.
This exciting mix enhanced the work done during the training and will provide a dynamic partnership to take forward the advocacy work the participants will undertake over the coming year.
The training programme included the following elements:
- The context for our advocacy
- Communicating our messages
- Introduction to Advocacy Planning
- Goal setting and Advocacy tactics
- Advocacy tools and skills development
- Practical experience and role play
- Planning/What’s next?
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Advocacy plan
An advocacy plan for the year following the training focussed on the following key areas:
Mining, Prisons, Lower Education where it was felt that there were policies in place for TB Control but more needed to be done to implement those policies.
Follow-up action
TB community advocacy introduced to the mining community
The Aurum Institute, has taken a lead in establishing TB Community Advisory Groups (CAG), made up of local community members, church leaders, politicians (ward councillors), community development workers, media representative (both print and radio) and decision makers from district department of health to advise in TB community interventions. They also advise on community outreach events, and mapping the community – community diagnosis when Aurum want to intervene in a particular community.
Nkosinathi Mngadi, Community Liaison Officer, who participated in the Advocacy Partnership advocacy training in August 2009, has already conducted TB advocacy training/workshops to the TB Community Advisory Group and Thibela Advisory Groups. Thibela TB is a Nguni language which means “prevent TB” – is a clinical trial aimed to reduce TB cases at least by 60% amongst the mining population in North West Province. This project, funded by CREATE, has recruited 7000 miners to participate in the project. Nkosinathi ‘’Nathi’’ Mngadi has now introduced TB Community Advocacy into the mining community with their next meeting scheduled for the 29 April 2010.
Nkosinathi Mngadi will also be presenting an abstract on TB Community Advocacy at the 2nd South African TB Conference to be held in Durban in June 2010. Plans are also underway to meet with the Head of the Mayoral Committee for health, who is a CAG member, who serves as a link between the trial site and the politicians in the district and who also reports to the Mayor of the municipality on the issues of health.
For further details of this work contact:
Nkosinathi Mngadi, Community Liaison Officer
The Aurum Institute Klerksdorp
E-mail : nmngadi@auruminstitute.org