Community Health Education (CHE) contributes significantly to the overall heath equation in Orissa by educating the people at the village and family level in easily applied decease and injury prevention methods. Many of the chronic health problems in Orissa can easily be prevented and treated. CHE teaches methods and remedies common place in the developed world, such as the importance of washing hands in clean water, boiling water and hygiene care combined with proper treatment for designatory alone will save many thousands of children’s lives annually.
The CHE program employs the principles of orality - the simple story telling and interactive illustrations to communicate over 1200 CHE health lessons in practical living for illiterate tribal villagers. This oral based society quickly responses to the CHE methods and can easily apply the lessons with their village Self Help Group (micro enterprise) and their family.
FIRE has a state wide CHE training program designed to train the master trainers that will train the trainers for the district and village levels. This systematic CHE training program is a significant challenge as there are over 200 tribal dialects that are different from the state language of Orissa. FIRE is funding CHE lesson translation into these tribal languages to effectively bring this vital health education to these remote villages.
Today, FIRE is working with over 2500 Self Help Groups which directly effect between 150 -170,000 people in Orissa. Participation in, or completion of the CHE program is a prerequisite for many low interest business loans.
CHE is a vital part of improved health and holistic answer for community transformation.
