Resources

“Sustained Relational Collaborations”. Rev Bob Mitchell's words on behalf of the Church Agencies Network.

Matthew Frost delivers opening remarks of the Religious & Faith-based Communities Perspectives Panel. To watch the video, please click the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRaCrT3dnJY

Report on the role of religion and development. Download the resource from the download link

A strategic review of Oxfam's work in Haiti between 2011 and 2014. To download this and other Oxfam resources, click here: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/

The global health community is focusing on immunization in relation to universal health coverage, targeting missed populations and closed communities. However, there are widely acknowledged historical politico-economic factors affecting UHC. In high-income countries, there is continued resistance to immunization within…

The  Review of Faith and International Affairs has just published a special series on Religion and Development See Journal here edited by Jill Olivier with a grant from JLIF&LC through DFID support Includes the following articles: Innovative Faith-Community Responses to HIV…

The African Christian Health Association (ACHA) family planning programme sought to utilize faith communities to improve contraceptive uptake. The program was in part implemented by increasing information, education, and communication on family planning to religious leaders and by them. This program aimed to create a replicable model for strengthening family planning within Christian Health Association’s (CHA’s) in other sub-Saharan countries.

A simple monthly tool was developed to be used by religious leaders for reporting, and a guide for messaging was developed to be used by religious leaders. In each country, the Ministry of Health (MOH) community referral forms and the MOH family planning cards and registers were used to collect data on referral and uptake of family planning services.

Tags:Capacity Building

WACC facilitates a Development Initiative Programme under which project partners in countries of the global South carry out one-year-long initiatives that place communication (including traditional media and digital technologies) at the centre of strategies to bring about social change.

Tags: Capacity Building, Data Collection by Local Community

Andrew Tomkins, Jean Duff, Atallah Fitzgibbon, Azza Karam, Edward J Mills, Keith Munnings, Sally Smith, Shreelata Rao Seshadri, Avraham Steinberg, Robert Vitillo, Philemon Yugi http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60252-5/abstract

Faith leaders, as trusted and respected members of their community, have played a hugely significant, and often unsung, role in the Ebola crisis. In the midst of confusion, fear and panic, communities have often turned to them for guidance. They…

Preventable child deaths outrage everyone. Immunization campaigns save millions of children’s lives and therefore unite widely divergent communities. But the untapped potential for partnerships to extend vaccination coverage, especially involving religious actors, is large. Two critical challenges are important and offer great promise: extending newer vaccines (notably against rotavirus and pneumococcus) and reaching underserved populations (“the fifth child”). The support and cooperation of religious communities, at global and national levels, is essential for both—leaders and communities can help address challenges and prevent the grave problems that arise when religious leaders oppose vaccination (such as in Pakistan and Nigeria). In building partnerships there are four priorities: (a) informing populations and building trust; (b) focusing on underserved populations; (c) overcoming barriers to vaccination campaigns in tumultuous countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo where faith networks are especially vital players; and (d) helping through holistic health approaches to “connect the dots” among different public health and welfare efforts to meet the needs of people and communities.

Religious leaders, with their tremendous authority at the grass roots, are key to garnering community support for broad immunization coverage. This workbook, designed for communication and programme officers and their immunization partners, provides guidelines on forging alliances on immunization with religious leaders and groups. It also offers advice on options that can be taken when confronting resistance to immunization, illustrated by success stories from three countries.

This annotated bibliography is a companion piece to the full report “LOCAL FAITH COMMUNITIES AND IMMUNIZATION FOR COMMUNITY AND HEALTH SYSTEMS STRENGTHENING”

This is a broad scoping review mapping and understanding the available literature on ‘religion and immunization’. The goal is to note where evidence and information can be found and to identify key areas for further research, engagement and partnership. An annotated bibliography accompanies the Report

In December 2013, representatives from 12 faith-based organisations came together to explore and articulate a theory of change for faith group and community mobilisation. The process examined assumptions about what success looks like and how we contribute to change; and specifically analyzed the role of faith, drawing on any existing evidence base. A small working group then met together in July 2014 to draw together the theory of change. Throughout the process, the group was careful to surface both similarities and differences. The theory of change diagram captures the core underlying beliefs that the group hold in common, while the narrative explains the diagram, fills in more detail and highlights areas of debate and that need further learning and testing.

On March 24th and 25th, 2014, the International Interfaith Peace Corps (IIPC) in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Senegal cohosted an international summit entitled Vaccinations and Religion: Issues, Challenges, and Prospects. The summit brought together more than 80 African Muslim government officials, medical professionals, and religious leaders to identify the challenges associated with vaccination in resistant and hard-to-reach communities in Africa in order to issue a declaration in support of disease prevention and help raise awareness within Muslim-majority communities about the necessity and importance of vaccination. Ultimately, the goal was to identify strategies to increase vaccine acceptance in their domestic constituencies.

World Vision’s HIV and AIDS response strategy focuses on building the capacity of communities to prevent the spread of HIV and on providing care and advocacy for people living with HIV and for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). The Channels of Hope (CoH) methodology, one of World Vision’s three core HIV and AIDS response models, is used to mobilise the infrastructure, organisational capacity, pool of current and potential volunteers, and unmatched moral authority of local churches and faith communities towards positive action on HIV and AIDS. Once they have been mobilised, World Vision works with churches and faith-based organisations to co-ordinate and equip sustainable, community-based HIV and AIDS programmes with an emphasis on reaching OVCs in need of care and support.

In the communities where WV works, many serious issues often limit improved child well-being (CWB). These might include violence against children, poor birth spacing, gender inequality, early marriage, wife inheritance, malnutrition, early marriage, gender-based violence, HIV infections, TB and malaria, trafficking, and more.

The central argument in the paper is that development is primarily about safeguarding and enhancing the dignity of human beings. Human dignity originates from God who has singled out humankind from other creations and favoured it in several ways. We are the only creatures that contain the Divine spirit which was placed in humankind by God during creation (Qur’an, 15:29). God has also distinguished humans from the rest of creation by endowing us with intellect (‘aql). Further, God has given humans the custodianship (khalifa) of the rest of creation on earth.

The success of integrated sustainable development (ISD) entirely rests upon a firm foundation of sound analysis of the following: Start-up assessment, Well-being and assets, Structural causes of poverty, Vulnerabilities to shocks and climate change, Opportunity analysis.