How to Mobilize Communities for Health and Social Change

This "how-to" guide is designed to help people plan and understand a specific process behind effective and field-tested community mobilisation programmes.

The following graphic image illustrates the guiding principles of community mobilisation. Based on the field work experience of the Health Communication Partnership, the "how-to" guide offers general steps, tools, and approaches to effective community mobilisation programmes, with a focus on work with disadvantaged or marginalized groups in developing countries.



In this context, community mobilisation is defined as: "a capacity-building process through which community individuals, groups, or organisations plan, carry out, and evaluate activities on a participatory and sustained basis to improve their health and other needs, either on their own initiative or stimulated by others."

This guide describes community mobilisation in a series of seven phases, starting with the first phase "prepare to mobilize" and is followed by "organizing the community for action, exploring the health issues and setting priorities, planning, acting, and evaluating together, and scaling up."

Country profiles are provided and include Bolivia, Peru, and the Philippines.