The Peru COHESION team traveled to the communities of Pingola and Sicacate on October 28th and 29th. They participated in a second set of co-creation meetings with community members and discussed interventions with local health workers.
Dates and times had been previously agreed with community authorities to ensure maximum participation. To promote the meetings, invitation letters were distributed in the communities and public announcements were aired on the local community loudspeakers. In both sites, a secondary school and a community auditorium were used for the meetings.
The number of participants ranged from 18 in Sicacate to 36 in Pingola. Unlike the first round of co-creation meetings, this time the participants were mostly female. This shows that we need to design strategies to involve men in health-related activities.
The meetings lasted around two hours. They were presented with seven potential interventions resulting from the first consultation. In small groups, using coloured paper, they classified the interventions in two groups: “Most Important” and “Less Important”, and provided the reasons behind each selection.
The COHESION team emphasized that the project does not yet know whether funding will be provided for any of the potential interventions, but that the participants’ inputs were important so to design the best possible activities for their communities. Some persons expressed their gratitude and a health worker said: «I feel that I am part of this project and I feel happy about that». The meetings ended with participants and COHESION members enjoying a delicious lunch together.
