Safe Motherhood Communities in Malawi

Through community based organizations we empower vulnerable people such as women and youth to have access to good healthcare. We do this by improving their knowledge and attitudes towards treatment seeking behaviors. We want them to know how to demand for health services and we aim for more people having access to good healthcare services nearby their homes.

The participatory approach in the community is done via Safe Motherhood Groups, one of the programs of the Uchembere Network, have been implemented in 25 villages: these groups affect the lives of 25,000 people. The Safe Motherhood Groups encourage women to go to the hospital for giving birth. They also give training sessions on breast and infant feeding. Their major challenge is to actually change behavior for women to go to hospital. Uchembere wants to grow to 72 villages. In three years’ time the Network wants the villages to sustain themselves.

Uchembere consists of 19 different NGOs that each have different expertises and address different maternal health issues: from training personnel how to attend clients betters, to changing behavior in villages to go to hospital.