Community engagement - a paradigm shift to WASH programming in emergencies

Community Participation is the backbone of Oxfam’s approach to public health and one of its core strengths when responding to diseases outbreaks. The Ebola crisis in West Africa however revealed that public health programming is often adopting instructive approaches rather than building on the local expertise of affected communities. Oxfam’s public health promotion team therefore revised current approaches to community mobilisation in WASH which prompted a paradigm shift towards greater community engagement. This paper provides an overview of the learning, adopted approach, and how this has shaped Oxfam’s overall public health promotion strategy.