The Community Health Ambassador Program is the training program that makes EQUIP so successful at reaching out to the communities The foundation of the CHA program, which strives to educate communities in important health practices based around the 5 Priority Elements of the BPHS: Maternal, Neonatal and child health (MNCH), family planning, reproductive health and GBV, Malaria, HIV/AIDS and WATSAN through an integrated program, is to ensure community ownership and personal motivation while achieving verifiable results through transformation. CHVs function as critical members of a service delivery team that links communities to facilities at all levels through learner-centered health education and through functioning referral networks.

EQUIP’s model begins at the community level, where Community Health Committees in the facility catchment areas provide community input on selection of CHAs. EQUIP’s key selection criteria for CHAs includes long-term residence in the community, capacity to competently perform the duties of a CHV, and respect in the community. 

Once selected, CHAs attend health promotion trainings, once a month for 1 to 2 days which focus on teaching practical aspects of key interventions. CHAs remain in the EQUIP training program for 12 to 24 months, whereupon they attend a graduation ceremony, receive a certificate and a t-shirt- further confirming their position of importance. The CHVs continued to stay tied to the program through refresher trainings, supervision, community events and meetings with their Regional Supervisors.

EQUIP’s CHA Strategy provides “hands-on,” learner-centered training. The concepts and methods they learn, and then teach, do not take the form of a lecture and it need not be a large group they are talking to. The CHV is encouraged to use a house to house strategy, where they talk, in the local dialect, with their family and friends and community members in a less formal “discussion” manner, using dramas and pictures to get their neighbors talking and practicing new behaviors. Through this method, CHAs recognize that only what their neighbors see them do themselves will give them reason to make change in their own lives. The concepts they learn and pass on are highly practical where they put to practice what they have learned in their own lives, then in their families, and then their communities. Finally, CHAs are a team who support each other and hold one another accountable. 

Currently there are over 1200 CHA volunteers working with EQUIP and over 6,000 have been trained.

For more information on EQUIP’s CHA Program, please email: info@equipliberia.org