Village Health Festivals Celebrate and Educate in Azerbaijan
Winter is fast approaching in the mountain village of Melhem, Azerbaijan. Fall rains have turned the unpaved villages to mud. The sky has turned a dusky grey and a damp mist hangs in the air – the kind of weather that beckons you to sit by a fire with a cup of hot tea. But on this day, the USAID-funded ACQUIRE Community Outreach Team has no time for tea. Today, they will conduct the last Community Health Festival of the season.
Due to the weather, today’s festival will be held indoors at the Melhem Middle School. School is closed for fall break, and the director, who is a member of the Village Health Committee, has agreed to provide the venue. As the team pulls into the vacant parking lot, schoolchildren rush toward the vehicle. Laughing with curiosity, they eagerly help the team unload plastic bags filled with leaflets, banners and balloons. Excitement grows as the local musicians arrive and begin setting up their electric piano, guitar and drum. A few minutes later, four ACQUIRE volunteer peer educators arrive. “They’re on the way!” they announce breathlessly. Since early morning, the peer educators have been walking the muddy lanes of the village inviting neighbors, friends, and relatives to the festival.
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Community health festivals A father and his son enjoy the Melhem Shamakhi’s final Community Health Festival of 2007
Photo Credit: ACQUIRE |
By 11:00 a.m. a crowd of 200 villagers—young and middle-aged women and men, adolescents, young children, and elders—has amassed. The festival begins! ACQUIRE Community Health Officer, Dr. Rasif Aliyev welcomes the audience. “Today we are gathered to celebrate the health of families and the health of our community!” A group of schoolchildren move forward to perform. But before they can begin – their teacher leaps from her seat, barking last-minute instructions as the audience laughs good-naturedly. They are among friends.
The USAID-funded ACQUIRE Project has been actively working in Melhem for more than two years as part of its five-year Reproductive Health and Family Planning Project. Through hard work and commitment, they have won the support and trust of the local community. The Project helped organize a Volunteer Village Health Committee and trained four local men and women as peer educators. These volunteers work hand-in-hand with ACQUIRE staff to mobilize and educate the community about the importance of reproductive health and family planning.
Since the beginning of the Project in 2004, ACQUIRE has trained 577 such peer educators in 51 communities across Azerbaijan. These men and women have conducted more than 9,000 health education sessions reaching nearly 87,000 women and men of reproductive age.
At today’s health festival in Melhem, ACQUIRE-trained volunteers proudly take their place on the dais. Respected elders from the Village Health Committee announce their endorsement of modern contraceptives as the safest way to plan a healthy family. Peer educators help organize a “quiz show” style game where male and female teams compete against each other to answer questions about family planning and modern contraceptives. As the musicians continue to play familiar folk melodies, peer educators invite the audience to take a turn on the dance floor and the festival takes on a carnival atmosphere. Apple-eating and arm wrestling competitions are interspersed with messages about the health benefits of birth spacing and using modern contraceptives. As the festival draws to a close, peer educators hand out leaflets providing details on a full range of modern contraceptive methods while female members of the audience shyly approach ACQUIRE’s exhibit table to ask questions about the variety of contraceptives on display.
As ACQUIRE Community Health Officer Mukafat Yusifova tosses the last plastic bag into the jeep and hugs her volunteers goodbye, she smiles, satisfied with the progress they have made. Thanks to their efforts, women and men in Melhem openly discuss family planning as an important health issue; they have accurate information about a variety of modern contraceptive methods and they know where these methods are available. Today’s festival is over, but the work of ACQUIRE’s Community Team has only begun. As their car pulls out of the Melhem Middle School parking lot, the Team begins talking about their plans for next year’s spring festivals.
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