1. Community Mobilization

2. What is a Community? A community is typically characterized by:
A sense of belonging
A sense of purpose and common goals
A high degree of cooperation and participation in pursuing common goals
An inter-personal climate characterized by mutual respect, sense of fraternity and/or fellowship, etc.
“Community” refers here to High Risk Groups (HRGs):
Injecting Drug Users (IDUs)
Female Sex Workers (FSWs)
Men having Sex with Men (MSM)

3. What is Community Mobilization?
Community Mobilization is:
A process of consulting with community
Creating space for community
Giving community a role in the decision making and management of programs
Building capacity of community to assume ownership of programs
Contd…

4. Why Community Mobilization?
1. Achieving Scale and Coverage
Makes HIV prevention a community priority
Uses organic bonding, through which individuals share emotions and understand/share responsibility so that their peers utilize services, etc.
2. Improving Quality
Strengthens collective bargaining power, ensuring safe practices between people with unequal power relations
Maintains and reinforces quality of services and not just as beneficiaries
Contd…

5. Why Community Mobilization?
3. Sustainability
Ensures sharing of responsibility by each member for consolidation and continuation of intervention
Actively initiates mobilization of resources and evolves innovative mechanisms

6. Level of Participation
Participation for material incentives - Affected community participates in activity only because they need the material benefits of doing so, e.g. money
Consultation - Affected community is asked about an activity by externals but their views may or may not influence it
Information Giving - People are simply informed that an activity has been designed

7. Joint Decision- Making
Self-mobilization
Joint Decision- Making -

8. Challenges Keeping ownership alive at community level
Achieving long-term sustainability
Systematically mobilizing communities throughout a large area
Responding to peer-driven needs (monetary and food support, etc.)
Monitoring and evaluation that is sensitive to community ownership and need for information for donor support

9. Barriers Judgmental attitude of service providers
Bringing all the community members together on one platform
Unpredictable behaviours of IDUs due to overwhelming need to do drugs
Low self-esteem of IDUs
Social and legal status of IDUs results in denial of their rights and entitlements
Lack of capacity of the community members and awareness of rights

10. THANK YOU