Community Participation in Designing & Implementation

The study sought to find out the community's participation in the designing and implementation of health communication campaigns. Focus group discussions and surveys were used to collect data with two focus groups discussions being conducted for each of the four selected health communication campaigns in Nambale Town. The campaigns in focus were, Wash your hands, Polio, Ant-malaria and Use one knife male circumcision. With regard to the designing and the implementation of the health campaigns, the interviews conducted with the heads of the concerned NGOs indicated a contradiction to what the participants had indicated. The heads indicated that they involved the communities in both designing and implementation of the campaigns whereas the participants pointed out that they had not been involved in the designing & implementation of the on going campaigns. The data revealed a certain amount of ignorance on the part of the NGOs as to what participatory communication was about. Despite the fact that the participants were not involved in the designing of the selected health communication campaigns, they however were appreciative of the benefits of the implementation of the programme.