When she gets through to her clients, they make changes that affect the whole family
Below is Meimuna with a client in her home where she works from
‘Just by doing her job and having conversations with her customers, she is able to give them the necessary information to help them lead a healthier and better life’.
Having a person like Meimuna as a mobilizer in her community is a dream come true as far as I am concerned. She has tens of women passing through her house on a daily basis. This is because she is a seamstress and makes clothes for most of the women in her community.
This means that when the women come to her, they usually have some time to spare and come to sit with her while they discuss fashion, the home and everything else in between.
Meimuna uses this opportunity to speak to women about the health topics that the BCS project is addressing.
When I went to meet with Meimuna in her house she was taking a break from sewing and she was doing her laundry. She said she was happy about the advantage her business gave her, in that firstly she gets the women when they are in a conversational mood and are happy to discuss anything. While there she speaks to her customers about Family Planning, Water Sanitation, Hygiene, Breastfeeding, and Malaria Prevention.
Secondly she thinks that it is a great advantage to get access to these women because once she is able to get through to them and convince them to make certain changes to their lifestyle and home living, they go to their homes and make the necessary changes and the whole family benefits from this improvement in lifestyle and wellbeing. Just by doing her job and having conversations with her customers, she is able to give them the necessary information to help them lead a healthier and better life.
She was able to convince these women to move past their misconceptions about all the birth control options and had them go to the clinic to get more information about birth control, have their questions answered and make a decision on which plan best suits them. 5 out of the 15 women that went for enquiries have chosen a plan that they believe will work for them and.
The aqua tabs have been an easy to convince people about especially women. She has convinced a lot of them to give their children treated water in a water bottle to take to school from home. Emphasizing that this is the only way they will be sure their children are drinking safe water.
Meimuna has another advantage going for her in that there is a park next to her house where the young boys in the community played football. She has made arrangements with the boys to clean up the area and gutters on about five occasions previously and they have been very good about it.
The first time she spoke to them about it, they all turned up to do the work on the day they were supposed to. She prepared food for them afterwards and that has been the tradition for the four subsequent times. She plans to organize another clean up soon as she feels able to provide a meal for them afterwards.
