He has become a reliable source of information on BCS health topics.
Nii Adjei Marley ex military officer turned volunteer.
I have come to learn that mobilizers lead all kinds of lives and have all kinds of backgrounds. What I did not expect though was to be speaking to an ex Military Intelligence Officer, which is what I did in Labadi (a suburb of Accra) one afternoon. I went to meet Nii Adjei Marley who is a mobiliser in his community.
After his retirement he heard that volunteers were needed for Polio vaccination exercises and decided to go and help. He has been volunteering in every vaccination exercise since. His community members have come to rely on him for information on when the next vaccination exercise is, and what vaccinations they will be. He is proud to say that his name was the first on the list of volunteers.
When the BCS project started, YPEP which is a local NGO working on the BCS project went to the Ghana Health Service to get recommendations on who they can use as mobilisers in the different communities. His name was mentioned for his community, and he was happy to volunteer. He has been actively involved in spreading the word of the BCS project since the beginning, speaking to his community members about Family Planning, Hygiene, Nutrition, Breastfeeding and Malaria Prevention.
He is well known in the community for what he does as a mobiliser for the BCS project and he has become a reliable source of information on health. He is in charge of a health committee that has been set up in his community. The committee organizes events that give them an opportunity to speak to the members of the community about the different health issues.
He has been especially happy with his success concerning family planning, because he met a lot of resistance but managed to convince 20 women to go the clinic or hospital and find out more information about family planning and what options were available. He knows for sure that 10 women went further and got a family planning option that worked for them. These women had an average of 4 children each and were between the ages of 31 and 42. He gave me an example of Esther Addaei, 31 year old woman that lives in his house compound who has four children. She is now on a five year plan.
He also spoke to me about the men and vasectomy. Even though he had to do a lot more convincing and talking to than he did with the women, he finally managed to get a few men to do the surgery after walking through the process with them and paying for the first two men. These two men in turn spoke to members of the community about the experience and process.
He told me that a church in his community called Devine Healers Church were celebrating their youth week this month and he had been invited to speak to the youth for three of those days on the topics stated above.
