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A story of Local Response by Stephen from Botswana
SALT was introduced in ??????. The first meeting was with the community leaders, us. And we passed it to the community. It helped the community because they were able to talk about their concerns and their hopes. They were able to go into dream building and self assessment and actions. The leadership of the community learned that the SALT model can be sustainable with the involvement of the community leaders because they are the main stay of those local communities.
During SALT, the community identified their concerns. After stimulation, they were able to think that this is happening to us and that we want to come together and to address it this way. SALT has helped many communities in our village.
(So what is different about this programme? Presumably there have been lots of other programmes?)
The first thing is that people were relaxed about meeting together. Although there are other organisations in the village, but everyone was by himself and not coming together. But since we mobilised them, they have started to interact with others.
Because in our village there are two areas that are critical. So now we are concentrating on people in those 2 areas. Some of the people there are drinking alcohol, taking drugs. They don’t work because there is a lot of unemployment in our village. But we are trying to help them and they can earn a living.
In the first meeting, there were few. And in the second meeting, they came in numbers. And there were some there who were disclosing their status.
I think others gave the message to them so that they came to see for themselves. When you reach home someone will ask you, “Where are you coming from?” and then the conversation starts. And people would talk about SALT and they wanted to go and see what SALT is all about.
So we think that this needs to some time to spread. We are thinking of doing advertising on billboards. Or to produce leaflets to spread the message around. We are also planning to give the leaflets to the schoolchildren so that when they get home they can give it to their parents to tell them about SALT.
I think SALT encourages people to look back and to see how they live. How they live their daily life. And SALT has shown them the importance of meeting together, staying together.
"When we practiced SALT, we looked at how we lived our lives together."
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