A story of Local Response by Pinsara Ilankoon of Plan Sri Lanka
There was 35% of under-nutrition prevalence among under children under 5 years of age at Kalugala village which is a rural, remote place 12km away from the small town of Andiyagala. The main income is seasonal farming and unskilled labour.
The health promotion facilitator and the Public Health midwife carried out focus group discussions with the mothers of that community. Their aim in the discussion was to identify their main health issue. Their first priority was undernourished children. Then the discussion focussed on identifying the related underlying factors of that community from the mothers. During the third focus group discussion with the same group, the following underlying factors were identified:
Domestic violence
Alcoholism and tobacco usage of males
Mothers who were fed up and had little enthusiasm
Unhappy family situation
Lack of early childhood stimulations for children
The facilitator drove the discussion to find the main underlying factors and the possible solution from the community. Then during the focus group discussion mothers prioritized the alcoholism of fathers as the main cause of domestic violence and unhappy family conditions. It was also responsible for other problems for the families of Kalugala village.
Then there was a discussion to find the causes of the alcoholism of fathers. Mothers said that the availability of alcohol in villages was a major problem. However, there was no liquor shop in the village and the men had to buy it from the city that was 12 km away and there was no public transport between the village and the town. But there was a man who produced illegal liquor products in the village.
So the women decided to find a way to stop the liquor production in the village. They decided to talk to the wife of the liquor man and she agreed to talk to her husband. Then the women’s group talked to the liquor man. ‘You are doing harm to this village’, they said. Then after a lot of discussion, the liquor man agreed to stop, but he needed another job to do. So the women’s group proposed to him to fish in the lake and the community arranged to buy fish from him every day. So liquor production in Kalugala village stops and a protein source for the children becomes available in the village.
Then they produced the ‘Happy Mood’ calendar in all of the families. Then gradually the men in the village also changed and the well-being of the families increased in the whole community. This change in mood reduced the stress in the mothers and improved the bond in the families between parents and children and the enthusiasm of the mothers also increased. By now the percentage of under-nourished children also decreased while the conditions of the whole community improved.
The lesson learned from this story is that if the community has opportunities to identify their strength and practice collective community action, they can be successful in their lives.