Swaziland: Faith Based Community Health Evangelism (CHE)

Community Health Evangelism is a good Practice project to improve the quality of life of people in rural areas of Swaziland. Specifically, its purpose is to empower women, men and children ensuring that their rights are observed and respected.  It encourages Women’s independence that liberates them to do things freely not forcefully. Further it motivates people to start their own businesses instead of looking forward to be employed in quite a state of no employment. This project major objectives are:

• Set to empower women to take full responsibility of their lives without being dependent to their male counterparts.
• To take care of Orphans, Vulnerable children, abused women and men.
• Conduct door to door home visits that is where they are able to see GBV cases and finding problems which are then reported, observe and report observed predicaments to the police.
• Provide guidance and cancelling if ever a school going child is victimized
• To work together with other organizations willing to assist in helping individuals at risk, for example the department of Social Welfare based under the DPM’s office as well as
• to help on managing and to stop any forms of abuse and violence which can lead to HIV/AIDS and do follow ups to ensure that necessary help is given to the individuals at risk.

The project has benefited a total of 19 beneficiaries, which includes 1 direct beneficiary, 18 indirect beneficiaries (e.g. through other networks) and non-online beneficiaries (e.g. websites access, mailing lists, scholarly articles).  There is no budget nor contributions made by the council to assist in this project. But it allows for a formal and informal feedback through report writing and keeping records. Follow ups on cases are also conducted to see if there are changes or improvements from those people at risk.

There are key challenges and some of the challenges the group faces include people or families who are still reluctant to come out and speak about their experiences. When one get someone arrested e.g. for rape, the years of sentencing are less. An elderly man may have raped a small child and sentenced to only 12 years yet he has totally destroyed the whole life of that minor survivor. To overcome these challenges, the organization conduct training courses, where the group is taught on many principles on how to communicate and interact with the people.

Busisiwe* is a single parent with four children who are boys. She was very sick as she was diagnosed with MDR and AIDS. She started treatment and followed all the instructions. She now healthy takes good care boys.  She owns a business as well as a home. The project has empowered women in four communities around Siteki and twenty-five (25) of them are now able to take charge, stand and do things on their own without fear and being intimidated. They are now independent and willing to support and empower others. Furthermore, Men have changed for the good by being supportive and they teach other man. For example, Dan Dlamini who helped in finding a young girl who was raped repeatedly by her grandfather. He took the initiative and reported the case to the police. Moreover, People and families now have respect for one another, when encountered with problems or misunderstandings, they consult for assistance and they do help if they can or refer them to experts.  In addition to that, Communities now recognises the need to take care of their families and take the responsibilities of being caring parents to their children. For awareness raining the community leaders and parliamentarians organize events where people are capacitated and tested for diseases like HIV, sugar diabetes, TB and Hypertension.

“The fact that we work with lot of people with different ideas makes work easier, since they can come out with more innovative ideas which can be combined and give out a solid state of understanding” she elaborated. Through the training process, people obtain relevant skills and experiences which makes the work more flexible. Also during the trainings, workbooks are provided that can be shared, which results in the sharing of lessons learned with authorities in an effort to increase the awareness and interest in the empowerment process.