ABNI  

COMMUNITY OUTREACH PROGRAMME

INTRODUCTION

EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES

“A change is coming. The children, especially the girls, are very confident and committed. Their eyes are shining. And they have brought the change themselves. Our role is small: they are the ones who will become agents of change in their communities.” 

(ABNI Programme Manager)

Fatima Memorial Hospital has an active Community Outreach Programme, registered with the Social Welfare Department as Anjuman Behbood-e-Nisvan-wa-Itfal (ABNI), which caters to the health, educational and vocational needs of men, women and children in the rural and peri-urban areas around Lahore. Initiated in 1985, by Fatima Memorial and partially supported by the Women’s Voluntary Service, this programme has provided medical relief to over half a million people. Focusing on communities such as Nainsukh, Malikpur, Lakhoder, and Talwara, where people often live without access to clean drinking water, sewerage, educational facilities, or health care, the team from Fatima Memorial is welcomed by the community members.

ABNI works in close collaboration with its community members and uses highly developed techniques of social mobilisation to involve communities in designing, launching and implementing an intervention. Before making any intervention, ABNI’s field officers conduct a thorough needs-assessment survey by taking into account the needs of all the stakeholders. A strategy is then developed and implemented with the help of a cross-section of community members, through the platform of a Community Based Organisation (CBO). A participatory approach is then adopted, with the aim being to give the community a sense of ownership in the intervention.

Through this programme, over 0.6 million patients have been treated and over 10,000 children have been educated through 41 community based schools.