Martha Simchimba

Lilongwe, August 16, Mana: National Social Mobilisation Committee (NSMC) on Tuesday engaged traditional and faith leaders from Kasungu, Lilongwe, Blantyre, Mulanje and Phalombe districts with key family practice messages under Kulumikiza Campaign.

Under the campaign, NSMC, a grouping of social mobilisation experts from different government ministries, is promoting integrated messages on adoption of desired behaviors such as WASH, child marriage, immunisation and nutrition and back to school.

Speaking on the sidelines of the engagement meeting in Lilongwe, NSMC Secretary Wallace Chipeta said faith and traditional leaders play a critical role in promoting social mobilisation activities in their respective communities.

He said the two groups of community leaders have the power to use their influence in society to bringing about desirable behaviors to their followers.

“Through the campaign, we want to have behavior change related data to be easily collected and tracked in order for stakeholders to maintain positive changes whilst we are also finding new ways of overcoming negative behaviors,” he said.

Chipeta disclosed that NSMC will create a platform for youths, mother groups, and community radios to discuss challenges for low adoption of desired behaviors.

He described Kulumikiza as a community responsive campaign that engage participants to come up with solutions to low adoption of desired behavior for their respective communities.   

One of the participants representing Pastors Fraternal Association of Malawi, Bishop Dr Lazarus Gama said the meeting has equipped them with the right information that will help them to disseminate immunisation and cholera messages to their congregation.

Sheikh Yunusu Hayadi commended the meeting and called upon government and non-governmental organizations to continue engaging faith leaders in awareness campaigns saying faith leaders have a number of groupings in their mosques and disseminating messages will be easy.

Apart from coming up with activities to be implemented at a community level, participants to the meeting also received integrated message booklets which NSMC, with support from UNICEF, developed to be used as stakeholders’ guidelines.