Empowered women from rural areas of Bolivia promote community development

Abstract

The United States Agency for Development in Bolivia (USAID/Bolivia) created in 2002 PROSALUD- Partners for Development Project (PfD) with the aim of improving the population's well-being. The project used three components: small grant scheme, technical assistance and database system management. Through the small grants scheme, the PfD supported a Community Participation Strategy (CPS) project over a three year period. The project involved the rural areas of six Bolivian departments and suburban areas of three Bolivian cities. The main objective was to increase health service utilization with a particular emphasis on empowerment of women, strengthening of local organizations and increasing the demand for health services. Women from both the urban and rural areas, and from different indigenous groups, were trained in project management, health promotion, reproductive health and family planning, advocacy and community participation. Participatory methodologies have allowed empowering women in decision making and capacity building throughout the entire project process. The experience shows that it is important to work with formally established grass-root community organizations and strengthen leadership within them. Additionally, the sub-projects demonstrated that interventions are more successful when promoters speak and write native languages, women are more motivated and empowered, projects are designed to be responsive to daily necessities identified by the communities and health services are culturally suitable. A preliminary evaluation, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, shows an overall improvement in health knowledge and practice, and utilization of health services.

What Works? Strategies to Increase Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health in Difficult to Access Mountainous Locations: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Facilitated structured planning and action oriented women's group sessions moving from problem analysis, strategies, implementation and review in Bolivia, coincided with a decrease in perinatal mortality from 117 to 43 deaths per 1000 live births (p<0.001) and increased participation in women's organisations from 7 to 54% (p<0.001) [45]. In other sites of Bolivia this model led to 73% of participants expressing willingness to use reproductive health services [46], CPR increased from an estimated zero to 27%, clean delivery kits were newly introduced and used in 27% of homebirths, and early breastfeeding increased from 25 to 57% within 3 years [32]. In two projects, inclusion of health, education and agricultural representatives and motivation of community leaders in planning activities led to perceived improvements in community-wide improved health behaviours and increases in health service utilisation in Papua New Guinea [47], [48] although this was not quantified or validated.…”

Cross-sectional analysis of self-efficacy and social capital in a community-based healthy village project in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

“…The study showed females and lower-educated people were more likely to attended community meetings in the project site (Tables 3 and 4 ). It seems common that females are usually more motivated and empowered through a community development program [ 24 ].…”

Empowerment of Housewives and Teenagers in Albinaa Madrasa Sukarasa Village, Arjasari Sub-District Bandung Regency

“…Skill enhancement can be done using the Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) approach, which is a participatory based method. With this PLA method, skill improvement is done by providing education and practice, as has been done by [16][17][18]. The PLA method which prioritizes community participation in the empowerment process can encourage women in decision making and capacity building [18].…”

“…With this PLA method, skill improvement is done by providing education and practice, as has been done by [16][17][18]. The PLA method which prioritizes community participation in the empowerment process can encourage women in decision making and capacity building [18]. This research adopts PLA method to improve the skill of housewives and teenagers at Sukarasa Village.…”