SBCC Summit 2016 CommTalk: Harnessing Religion in South Sudan

“We had to speak for their ears, and sometimes religion is the best way”.

This CommTalk took place at the First International SBCC (Social and Behaviour Change Communication) Summit in February 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The CommTalks at the Summit were 10-minute "TED Talk" like presentations that focused on experiences from the field, and presented an opportunity for organisations to share their innovations, successes, challenges, and lessons learned. In this recording of one of the CommTalks, Darriel Harris, a PhD student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks about his experiences of working in South Sudan in 2011-2012, specifically how he used scripture from the Bible to run health education workshops covering a range of health issues including malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia, and maternal and child health.
Harris starts off by explaining that even though the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had run many health education campaigns addressing key health issues, when he ran his education workshops, people said they were hearing the message for the first time. He goes on to explain why people felt this way, and what he did that was different.

He recounts how he - as a person without any health education experience and as a new graduate of Duke University Divinity School, and a newly ordained minister - visited Sudan to work with religious leaders in that country. He came to realise that people needed health education, so he investigated ways in which to offer health education workshops that would resonate with the community. The advice he received from Duke University was to “teach it for their ears”. He saw that people in South Sudan are very religious and that they love to hear stories about the Bible. Therefore, by looking at what people loved and what they needed more of, he decided to teach health and scripture from the Bible at the same time. For example, he used stories about Mary and baby Jesus to bring across messages about the need to protect children, as well as parents’ responsibility to protect their children. He used the story of Abraham and Jacob to talk about the importance of having fresh, clean water; and used Joseph to talk about the need for men to be involved in the maternal health of their wives. As he states, “They learned about malaria not because because I was teaching them about malaria, but because I was teaching them about something they cared about - I was teaching them about Mary”. Also, by using this method, he explains that “having a mosquito net for your child did not become a medical act, it became a faith act”.

He reports that, following these workshops, the whole village started using mosquito nets, they dug 100 pit latrines, and more people started washing hands with soap.
Harris concludes by making the point that over 80% of the world’s population is religious. Organisations are already successfully using religious networks to reach people with health education, but he recommends also using the language of religion to convey important messages. “I think if we can do this, we can be impactful.”