Strengthen Social Mobilization Efforts

All mobilization activities focus on making FP information available and bringing the services closer to the community members even in hard-to-reach areas in urban slums. The LGA health educators lead the process of recruitment and selection, adapting the criteria to best fit their needs. The social mobilizers are volunteers from the communities.

TCI helps to validate the list of social mobilizers to make sure that they meet the criteria established.

The first two days of the training are hands-on orientation adapted from NURHI. The third day of the training, the newly trained social mobilizers conduct neighborhood campaigns with LGA Health Educators and Social Mobilization Assistants (SMAs) providing oversight.

Each of the LGAs develop a monthly workplan/schedule of social mobilization activities which they plan to implement. The SBCC Committee develops a social mobilization work plan with the social mobilizers to ensure that activities are implemented in a timely manner. They also use a social mobilization coordination chart to enable better planning. These tools help the SBCC Committee to monitor activities as well. By measuring progress, programs and activities can make decisions and adjust plans based on evidence. TCI-supported States implements 4 types of social mobilization activities:

1. Neighborhood campaigns – During neighborhood campaigns, mobilizers move from door to door talking about the benefits of FP and referring people to access FP services at nearby facilities.
2. Indigenous events and festivals – Obtain permission to man a booth/table with materials on family planning
3. Engagement with community associations, like market women, hairdressers, barbers, tailors and motorcycle drivers – Share information on family planning in an association meeting, for example
4. Key life events - Mobilizers will identify key life events (weddings, naming and graduations) in their communities, where a mobilizer can have a slot to talk with guests about the benefits of modern FP

The neigborhood campaigns are planned by LGA health educators with the SMAs. They work with and also supervise the mobilizers during this activity. The engagement with community associations as well as key life events are led by social mobilizers after which they provide feedback to the on the outcome to the LGA health educators and SMAs. In addition, the social mobilizers utilize other avenues to generate demand for FP services. They support the SBCC Committee workplan implementation by leveraging on indigenous events to conduct referrals and also utilize community theater performances to conduct referrals.

The social mobilization approach also supports key service delivery interventions such as the 72-Hour Clinic Makeover and the training on LARC for service providers. These activities provided the opportunity to increase service visibility, facilitate knowledge exchange and refer prospective clients using branded referral cards.

Monitoring of these activities included measuring mobilization meeting attendance, supervisor checklists and family planning uptake—through the number of referrals provided compared with the number of completed referrals.

• Integrate LPAY module into the social mobilization training*
• Adapt branded referral cards so that they now include an age range (15-24, above 24)

* Note: For first year of LPAY intensive programming, CCSI will lead social mobilization activities, but the local CSO will serve as an understudy while CCSI will be providing mentoring and supervision. Then, CSO can transfer their capacity to their staff within their CSO.