Empowering communities through targeted health promotion is helping individuals and families make changes to their behaviours.
One such community where this is being witnessed is Kautru village in Suki Fly Gogo Trust Region in Middle Fly District.
The community mine continuation agreement (CMCA) Middle and South Fly health program (CMSFHP) support community health through promoting the Healthy Islands Concept, recognised by the Health Department.
A component of the concept is ensuring access to clean, safe drinking water and recognising the health benefits this can have.
After identifying clean water access as a community issue in Kautru during the 2014 village health volunteer training and family assessments, and again during the dry weather event in 2016.
CMSFHP health promotion officer, Cyril Yama, has been persistent in promoting the importance of safe drinking water.
However, for 12 families in Kautru, they decided to take it one step further and came together to contribute money to purchase water-purifying buckets.
The buckets were purchased on their behalf by Mr Yama, who also helped assemble and deliver them.
Kautru is a model village for the Healthy Village program in the Suki area.
It’s funded through the CMCA portion of the Western Province peoples’ dividend trust fund, managed by Ok Tedi Development Foundation and implemented by Abt Associates.