Project Background
SurfAid works in remote areas in Indonesia, where malnutrition is common. Sumba and Sumbawa are beautiful holiday and surfing destinations; however, under nutrition rates are much higher than national averages. Behind the palms of some of the world’s top surfing destinations are villages so remote that basic government services don’t reach them. There is no clean water, health services, education or electricity.
In Sumba, 60% of children under five are underweight, malnourished or stunted, which is the single biggest contributor to the death of children under 5. In response to the unnecessarily high incidence of child death, SurfAid provides practical support like materials for water facilities, basic healthcare services, and nutrition gardens. However, it is through educating parents and changing behaviours that SurfAid achieves sustainable improvements in the health of children in remote areas. With the support of Footprints, SurfAid has been able to produce six community videos on healthy behaviours, such as exclusive breastfeeding, healthy sanitation practices and establishing nutrition gardens in remote communities.
These videos will help promote health, and support behavior change.
Project Activities
SurfAid produced 4 videos for the communities in Parado, Sumbawa Island, and 2 videos for the communities in Laboya Barat, Sumba Island. Our experience shows our most effective outreach activities to be educational videos, which were made involving the communities themselves.
The different topics and content are all related to the different barriers to behaviour change. For instance, in Parado, a big barrier to adopting early and exclusive breastfeeding, was the perception that immediately after the baby is born, the father or a male representative of the family, must pray with the baby. Therefore, women were not given enough time to try the get the baby to breast feed. The midwives and health volunteers therefore decided to ask the religious leader to be part of a video that explained what exclusive and immediate breastfeeding is. With the religious leader involved, people now openly discuss the possibility of immediate breastfeeding.
The other topics of the educational videos are: Nutrition gardens, boiling water before drinking, family planning, exclusive breastfeeding and stopping open defecation.
Each story line was developed with health volunteers and SurfAid staff identifying the main barriers communities faced in adopting healthier behaviours. We then looked at how to turn these issues into simple, funny stories with each video lasting no longer than five minutes. The community health volunteers and community members then translated the story concept and initial script into the local language, and ensured it was suitable for the local culture.
Community Involvement
The video production involved many community members. With the help of local leaders and village health volunteers, we selected actors from the community, who were very happy and enthusiastic to participate. Other community members also helped by making their houses or gardens available for filming.
The videos are made in a soap opera style, which is very popular with the communities in Sumbawa and Sumba. It is clear from first showings that community members immensely enjoy watching a short movie in their local language that’s funny, deals with real issues and stars their neighbours!
The Posyandu is a monthly health activity run by the health volunteers where children under five and pregnant mothers receive basic health services. We trained the village health volunteers to use these educational videos during the education sessions for parents or caregivers in Posyandu. We also showed the videos during other community events or health-related public events such as Handwashing Day and National Health Day.
At the time of reporting, we have trained 75 community volunteers to use the videos as part of their educational activities. The early indicators are really positive… The community members LOVE the videos and the stars in their midst!
Project Background
SurfAid works in remote areas in Indonesia, where malnutrition is common. Behind the palms of some of the world’s top surfing destinations, are villages so remote that basic government services don’t reach them. There is no clean water, health services, education or electricity.
In Sumba, 60% of children under five are underweight, malnourished or stunted, which is the single biggest contributor to the death of children under 5. In response, SurfAid provides practical support like materials for water facilities, basic healthcare services, and nutrition gardens, but it is through educating parents and changing behaviours that SurfAid achieves sustainable health improvements for children living in remote areas.
Project Overview
The Footprints Network's contribution will help SurfAid support parents on the remote islands of Sumbawa and Sumba, Indonesia to practice child care techniques that fight malnutrition. Malnutrition is a multi-faceted issue and parents play a huge role.
Because of the unique local cultures, customs, languages and low educational attainment in the places where SurfAid works, a creative and highly focused parental education programme is required. SurfAid will guide local communities in the preparation of educational videos to produce fun, culturally appropriate materials that will contribute to better parenting, and healthier kids.
SurfAid's project will benefit 5,034 households in 31 communities in Sumbawa and Sumba.
Project Objectives
One of SurfAid’s most effective outreach activities has been the development of educational videos with the communities we partner with. These short movies are soap opera in style and are written by the communities in their local languages with the guidance of SurfAid staff. Recorded using phones and simple cameras, community members are the stars of the movies. The movies are then shown at community events and during community health sessions, and support community cohesion, celebrate local customs, and reach men, women and children alike.
The core project objectives are:
- Improve parental knowledge of good parenting, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation in Sumba and Sumbawa.
- Increase the coaching skills of health volunteers to support the parents in their communities.
These objectives will be realised through:
Production of 5 community led, soap opera style, educational videos on:
Child Development to promote good parenting including counsel on what parents can do to stimulate healthy development; to support early intervention when children are sick; to teach appropriate feeding practices; and to learn interactive, age appropriate games.
Nutrition to encourage planting gardens, preparing new foods, and a better understanding of nutrition.
Sanitation Practises to promote the construction and use of latrines, washing hands, practising safe birthing, and maintaining a clean home.
In addition, all the villages in Parado and Lamboya Barat will receive training and coaching on good parenting techniques.
Community Involvement
All of SurfAid’s programs employ a philosophy of a “hand up, not a hand out”. To achieve this, we work to empower communities through training and behaviour change.
In this project, groups of community health volunteers (kaders) work together with the local health department to deliver health messages on nutrition, hygiene and sanitation to their neighbours, focusing on at-risk households. They are our frontline, receiving ongoing training and support from SurfAid staff. These kaders are the bridge between their own community and the community health services (Posyandu).
The Posyandu is a monthly health activity run by the kaders, where children under five and pregnant mothers receive basic health services. These include monitoring, weighing, immunisation and provision of health information. To help the kaders give clear and correct health messages to families, it is important they are trained and have educational materials. These videos will be an important tool for them, both in working with the community members to create the video, and showing the clips in different health promotion settings.