Harm reduction interventions

Substance abuse and, consequently, the economic and health burden of substance-related diseases  disproportionately affect those in impoverished communities. It is in this space that we provide substance users with harm reduction packs, the necessary support, and commensurate referrals. Our overarching goal in this endeavour is to reduce harm both to individuals and society through knowledge-based interventions that minimise risk. The  smoking or drug cessation programs we run target key and vulnerable populations in the minority and marginalized informal communities.

Gender based violence and femicide

Our work with community-based organisations and structures is centred around developing tailor-made strategies to reduce gender-based violence and femicide. We  extensively explored the impact of using the photo-elicitation approach that does not rely  solely on verbal or written techniques. The photo- elicitation approach uses images to sensitise communities on gender-based violence in which they participate in gathering the evidence and analysis of the results. As part of our gender-based violence and femicide reduction strategy, we have set up active community action teams as one of our models for sustainable community dialogues. We  adapted photo-elicitation  to educate and enhance  mastery and as a language or form of communication to articulate  our community interventions. This method serves multiple purposes and areas of interest, such as empowerment, enhanced technological relationships, understandings,  peer support, creative expression and a sense of achievement that meets  our intended organizational goals. Our online campaigns have projected high personal relevance and intensity linked to  greater awareness benefits through our social media presence and relevance. Most of our themes are supported by the broader  literature and corpus on photovoice and its educative purposes in addressing gender-based violence and femicide.

Environmental conservation

We work with communities, schools and community based organisations to preserve natural resources through reducing unsustainable agriculture, deforestation and burning fossil fuels. We have a special focus on prevention of pollution and ecological degradation. We are implementing projects that promote economic and social development of the communities we work in largely targeted at young people.

Peace and conflict resolution

Teaching young people and developing platforms for conflict resolution at community level is our central focus. We engage and capacitate young people to be in a position to have collective security and to identify early warning of conflict. We demystify how violence and conflict can be viewed and addressed through the intersections of democracy, human rights, gender, poverty, and governance. We empower communities to maintain peace and stability through life-skills training.

Nutrition support

One of our community-centred missions is to  constantly identify and provide our beneficiaries with nutritious meals and food parcels. We also pro-actively create or link beneficiaries with potential employment opportunities. Our community nutrition programme targets children living with HIV, those  in informal settlements, young people, people on  drugs and  victims of gender-based violence. We seek to restore human dignity through our humanitarian and rights-observing projects that we carry out in marginalized and less fortunate communities in circumstances of adverse poverty.

Community engagement and social mobilization

Our community engagement and social mobilization consist of community dialogues, community-led monitoring, and social media engagement as foundational components of our efforts. Our main  aim is to involve communities in ‘bottom-up’ approaches in our community response strategies. In the process, we identify how community engagement approaches are applied on the ground and how they support more robust implementation in  our community response systems. Our projects comprise  a rapid review of evidence and  interventions in mobilizing community-level action to control health risks and outbreaks in low-resource and humanitarian contexts. We have vast experience in providing critical analysis of current evidence on community engagement and in preparing for or responding to health-related outbreaks and other emergencies. We have the capacity and capabilities  to identify approaches and practices that address these related risks especially in low-resource settings. We proactively document lessons and potential good practices, and  identify critical gaps in current evidence and intervention systems for action.

Integrated community health service

We provide screening, testing, linkages and retention in care services related to HIV, TB, STI, and COVID. We collaborate and provide management capacity building, and clinical mentoring to community-based organisations that focus on providing community health and social services. We document and disseminate best practices as part of a community-led provision of sustainable health services.

Tailored prevention interventions

We  work with various communities to build, re-build and capacitate safer neighbourhoods through community-based health education interventions. By taking advantage of the advent of technology, our team of dedicated and highly trained mentors constantly reaches out to communities through community health education, workshops, virtual support and education groups and  door-to-door activities. We have also established vibrant WhatsApp and social medial groups that are tailored and consciously target communities and specific key population groups. We are a community health hub with an analytic and active team that embraces  prevention interventions to curb unsafe health practices, and capacitate  communities in creating healthier streets.