Madelon
To facilitate local stakeholders in co-creating and executing actions that help prevent pneumonia in 0-5 year olds in the slums of Kampala, Uganda
Through Participatory Action Research, local stakeholders co-created low-cost interventions that western people could never have thought of: showing an awareness-raising YouTube video in a local cinema, building cooking shelters (made of wood and iron sheets) for outdoor cooking and training Village Health Teams in health-consultation.
After a few months, lung problems were measured by local organization Revelation Life, concluding that no children have had lung problems since the introduction of the cooking shelters. Also the cooking shelter had been further developed to catch and purify (rain)water.
In December 2015 the Healthy Cooking Challenge won the Albert Schweitzer Award, for its simplicity and impact. The prize value of €5000,- was spent a few months later on monitoring, evaluation and upscaling of the project.
Since 2015, the project -under the new name Clean Cooking, Healthy Lungs- was upscaled to five more slum areas in Kampala. Since then, 12 Village Health Team members were trained.
See also this video about the impact of this Challenge.
Read the full story of this Challenge in our handbook Participatory Action Research (in Dutch).
