Our job demands, confidence, accuracy and believability and these are the key take-outs by Davis Arere and Doris Osano one of the 12 who were trained by Amref as part of the Mums Magical Hands sessions for Community Health Volunteers in Mombasa.
Davis a Health Promotion Officer is primarily tasked with interacting with the community by gathering information, channeling it up and down and creating linkages between different points of contact. As a benefactor of the Amref training, Davis took their new skills to Kiembeni Ward within Kisauni Sub County where he cascaded the MMH training to the areas Community Health Volunteers. .
He added, “Initially I viewed the interventions of hand washing, wearing masks, physical distancing, coughing etiquette among others as government talk, but having gone through these training sessions it emphasizes the personal responsibility all of us have to win the war on Covid-19. “Thus armed with this new knowledge, I have taken it upon myself to drive these messages home” further noting “If all of us are not working towards the same cause, our efforts may be useless.”
“With the tools we have been exposed to passing the skills down will be much easier and we should be able to communicate and reinforce key messages with the mothers on our route because mothers are indeed our super heros in the communities we live in. Our mothers hands mean everything from, cleaning, cooking, disciplining amongst many others, Mothers are the pillar of our homes ! ” said Davis.
Accompanying Davis was Public Health Officer Doris Osano who shared the same sentiments as her fellow trainee; MMH training has expounded our collective capacity terming her ability to relay this information has now been elevated significantly. She added by empowering our mothers, they feel like they own this initiative and in doing so we are able to tag them as Mama Bomba (Heroic Mums) a sure win strategy because in a subtle way, the concept gives the mother a unique responsibility to keep the curve flat.
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“I do it with pride, I do it with a passion and for me it’s not a job, it’s a calling one whose badge I wear proudly and confidently.” Asha beams as she shares her story, enacting what she has learnt from Davis and Doris.
For her these sessions are very personal as the people she engages with she considers to be extended family and she has taken it upon herself to ensure the right messages and actions are communicated and engrained within her community. “Given the composition of my community, when I work I am someone’s daughter, sister, mother or grandmother and this knowledge adds a new level of responsibility in how much effort we put in our work.” she said.
This training has helped me expound my knowledge noting she is now better equipped to impart knowledge to her other community volunteers. “Each one of us has allocated homes that we visit and through teaching we further cascade this information down to the grass roots, we are able to scale the intervention to every door step and in doing so we keep the curve flat and ensure adherence to set Covid-19 interventions. This she says with a smile but looking in her eyes you can see some apprehension “Sadly with all our efforts, there still are irresponsible people, the onus is on us to make sure we all play our part but this is not so.”
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