The year 2016 started on a high
note, last year my thinking was challenged by my head of department who encouraged
me to be innovative on how we can interactively engage communities about health
research. After so many years of
engaging different groups of people it felt like we have exhausted all the
channels we would make sure we have a strong relationship with communities in relation to health research.
Personally I thought of sporting activities like football; I thought about how many Malawians like following the English Premier League and how they are able
to mention most of the players in their teams they support yet they have never
met them face to face. Furthermore I
noted how football brings people together especially in rural areas where
people travel long distances to watch a football match due to lack of
entertainment. Having this idea I took
advantage of the working relationship that I established with some of the community
leaders in Chikwawa to explore the opportunities that can be found in sporting activities to engage rural masses about health research.
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| Community leaders greeting players from the two villages |
I decided to fund a football bonanza which
involved 2 local football teams from separate villages, to me I considered the
whole idea as something very small but in the 2 communities it was
something so great and valuable. From what I heard the 2 teams started preparing
for the game a month before the actual day and messages about the game were circulating in all the surrounding villages. On the actual day many people from the
surrounding villages gathered.
According to my observation I
noted football is one of the activities that we can use to reach people about
health research, many of the community members gathered to watch the game. This
meant that community mobilization was automatically done, there would be no
need of coercing them to come and listen to the messages rather in this case
the message would be attached to football. Considering how this whole function went
I observed the importance of using
already existing channels to engage communities like this one; people love
football and I think it would be easy for them to understand science if its
attached to it.
