Communicate & Celebrate - Western Pacific Community Engagement Toolkit

People celebrating with balloons in Cambodia. — Credit: WHO/ Y. Shimizu

Why Communicate and Celebrate?

Communicating accomplishments and lessons learned from community engagement efforts can help get the word out, strengthen efforts, and honor those doing the work. Celebrating successes can help sustain and expand the work of engaging communities for health.

Key Questions to Consider

How will we document the work being done and the lessons learned?
How will we communicate successes and lessons learned with the community, stakeholders, funders, decision-makers, the public and more widely (e.g. other areas of the country or Region)?
How will we celebrate accomplishments and honor community champions?

How will we use what is learned to improve our community engagement effort (e.g. feedback loops)?
How will we institutionalize or sustain what works?

How will we use what is learned to advocate for further community and system changes to improve health and health equity?

Some Recommended Actions

__ Document the work done, highlighting the process and lessons learned for others to learn from (e.g. conclusions and recommendations from the evaluation).
__ Communicate lessons learned to communities and other stakeholders, decision-makers and wider audiences in other communities and countries.
__ Engage the media in communicating success stories.
__ Highlight the accomplishments and recognize champions, community members and outcomes. This may include through communication channels, at a ceremony, etc.
__ Develop feedback loops to use the information from monitoring and evaluation to adjust strategies and interventions (e.g. guide improvements, resource allocation).
__ Use the evaluation findings to advocate for sustained support of the efforts (e.g. institutionalize effective programs and policies) and/or for further practice, program and/or policy changes needed.