Published: Tuesday, 16 June 2015 14:49
The Health and Nutrition Civil Society Platform held its first advocacy training in Freetown on the 2nd and 3rd June. This two-day training is the first in a series of trainings designed to strengthen the new structures established in the districts and build platform members’ capacity to accelerate advocacy efforts for scaling up nutrition and immunization for policy change.
Members will also gain confidence to reach out and engage communities to increase awareness of key issues related to nutrition for action in areas such as food security, WASH, education and social protection for all with particular reference to its significance for women and children.
The training brought together 35 members of the district coordinating body from 10 districts along with media personnel and key representatives of the media taskforce Kombra Media Network to train them on how to advocate effectively for nutrition and immunization through the following sessions:
- Scaling up nutrition; its concept and the role of civil society
- Hunger and Malnutrition and its impact on development outcomes
- The role of the community in advocacy for nutrition and immunization Community engagement and ownership of nutrition and immunization
- Practical steps for effective advocacy and communication Advocacy and communication Action plan
Recommendations from the training include a refresher training as well as further training in the field, cross district learning where members will have an opportunity to gain further experience from each others activities as well as receive supportive supervision.
These trainings will be followed by the development of advocacy activity plans for the platform to conduct for the rest of 2015 as we scale up advocacy activities to in line with government post Ebola plans.