Create healthy communities

 

Communities are at the heart of AMREF’s work

Our goal is to enable entire communities to live healthier lives.

We work with some of the poorest and most marginalized people in Africa: nomadic populations, those living in remote rural areas, urban slums,  and areas affected by conflict.

Communities identify their own health needs and AMREF works with them to develop projects that will meet those needs. 

Whether people are living in a slum in Nairobi, a camp for the internally displaced in Northern Uganda, or a remote rural area in Ethiopia, we believe that the community is resourceful, and so we put their interests and opinions first – working in partnership at all levels, every step of the way.

AMREF enables communities to take control of their own health development and helps them demand the assistance and services to which they are entitled.

Within the different communities, AMREF targets those who are most vulnerable to ill health: women, children under the age of five, and young people.

Learning from the community

In almost every case where we have intervened to solve community health problems, we learned that the community itself had the answer to many of its own problems. 

Children are most vulnerable

Over 80% of the households in Africa survive on less than US$1 per day. As a result, poor children in Africa are 10 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday, and 9 times more likely to die of infectious diseases than children from wealthier families.