Community-selected workers
Health workers are chosen by and accountable to the communities they serve.
Try: “WASH”, “women's empowerment”, “Sierra Leone”, “climate resilience”.
In remote and underserved areas, the nearest clinic can be hours away. Community health workers are often the first, and sometimes only, point of care, yet they frequently lack the training, supplies and support to do the job well.
SDI strengthens community health systems by training and equipping community health workers, improving referral links to clinics, and reinforcing the supervision and supply systems that keep care reliable.
Health volunteers are selected by, and accountable to, their own communities, and local health authorities lead supervision. Stronger care is embedded in the existing system, not built parallel to it.
Practical, community-led activities that turn commitment into measurable change.
Preparing local health workers to deliver trusted, quality frontline care.
Ensuring health workers have the basics they need to serve their communities.
Clear pathways that connect community care to clinics when people need more.
Bringing care to mothers and young children where risks are highest.
Early detection and response that protect whole communities.
Ongoing support that keeps quality high and health workers motivated.
Better local data to guide decisions and improve services.
The same principles guide every SDI programme, shaping how we deliver this one.
Health workers are chosen by and accountable to the communities they serve.
We reinforce the existing health system rather than creating a parallel one.
We work with ministries and clinics to align training, supervision and supply.
Ongoing mentoring and supply keep care reliable long after training ends.
Isata · Sierra Leone
When Isata was chosen by her community to train as a health worker, she already knew every family in the village. What she gained was the skill to turn that trust into care. Through training and mentoring, she learned to recognise danger signs in pregnancy and childhood illness, to treat what she safely could, and to refer quickly when a case needed a clinic. Equipped with basic supplies and connected to the nearest facility, she became the village's first line of care, often reaching mothers and children long before they would otherwise have travelled for help. Under regular supervision from the local clinic, her confidence and reach have grown. Isata is quick to credit the system around her, the training, the supplies, the clinic she can call, but for the families she serves, the difference is simpler: reliable care that now lives in their own community.
Communities far from clinics, especially mothers, newborns and young children who face the highest health risks.
Trusted local people, chosen by their communities and trained to deliver basic care and connect families to clinics.
By their own communities, with training and supervision provided in partnership with local health authorities.
Through indicators such as people reached, timely referrals and improvements in maternal and child health.
Partners can fund training, supplies or full programmes. Reach out through our contact page.
Clean water, sanitation and hygiene that turn preventable illness into healthy futures.
View ProgrammeSafe spaces and systems that shield children from harm, neglect and exploitation.
View ProgrammeStronger local voice and accountability so communities shape the decisions that affect them.
View ProgrammeFund a specific activity, support the whole programme, or partner with SDI to reach more communities. Every contribution is invested in results we measure and share.