Social Action Projects

Faiths Act in Africa

Our programme in Africa aims to support and enhance multi-faith work in health care and its integration into national malaria control plans. This includes training for religious leaders to promote health education on the basis of their different faith traditions.

Project Muso

Project Muso Ladamunen is a collaboration of agnostics, Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants, which partners with women living in Yirimadjo, Mali to fight crises of health and poverty. Project Muso's Community Based Malaria Treatment Program, supported by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, aims to stop malaria deaths while also strengthening the primary health care system as a whole.

The malaria programme uses several strategies to help prevent, catch and cure malaria early, before it reaches its deadly stages.

  1. Community Health Worker outreach
  2. Free access to health care for the poor who cannot afford to pay
  3. Continued training for health professionals and
  4. Construction of new health care infrastructure.

Project Muso integrates these efforts with other programs to help families free themselves from the trap of poverty and disease, through microfinance, participatory education, and community organising.

Faiths Acting Together in Nigeria

Nigeria, with its population of over 140 million, is the most populous country in Africa and, correspondingly, has one of the largest number of deaths from malaria. It has a vast infrastructure of churches and mosques with clinics and hospitals run by faith communities. In May 2009 the World Bank with Global Fund and other major donor funding began rolling out a national malaria control plan involving health education, provision of bed-nets and house spraying against the mosquito, and ACTs against the parasite.

Together with the Washington-based Centre for Interfaith Action, CIFA,  we are supporting the involvement of the Nigerian faith communities in this major push against malaria via a new national Nigerian Interfaith Action Association (NIFAA) led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa'ad Abubakar III and Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja. This pilot project is a breakthrough in the relationship between African governments and faith communities and, it is hoped, will provide a model for malaria control and integrated health initiatives in other countries.