Education and community engagement are integral to our mass vaccination projects
Children are at high risk of dog bites and contacting rabies. Forty percent of reported rabies cases worldwide are children under the age of fifteen. In our project areas the paediatric proportion is often even higher. Rabies most often persists in poor communities and rural regions of developing countries in Africa and Asia. If the risks are widely understood and appropriate dog bite treatment is well known – rabies is 100% preventable. The financial burden of human treatment is high, control via dog vaccination costs ten time less and protects whole communities. Mass canine vaccination will rid an area of rabies, but this takes time during which communities remain at risk – whilst we work to eliminate the disease, education helps us save lives.
The educational sessions are aimed to empower children, their teachers and their families with the knowledge to protect themselves from bites, preventing rabies and save lives. We encourage members of the public to bring their dogs for vaccination and sterilisation and publicise our response team for humane canine rabies control.
We are creating communities who know how to protect themselves from rabies and who act to support rabies control.
Schools
Experienced educators deliver the ‘Rabies prevention’ lesson directly to children in their classes, and assemblies. We teach children from age five up to sixteen – focussing particularly on primary schools. Our teams teach on an average around 100-400 children in each hour-long session and aim to cover all children in the area working school-by-school.
The ‘Rabies prevention’ lesson teaches five key messages:
- Rabies is serious – How the rabies virus transmits and its effect on the body.
- How to be safe around dogs - Understanding dog behaviour for safe and friendly interaction and knowing the warning signs to prevent being bitten.
- First aid - Life-saving steps to avoid rabies infection if bitten by a dog.
- Community protection - Understanding the nature of how vaccination works and encouraging community action.
- Dog population management - Promoting humane dog population control and encouraging owners and authorities to neuter dogs.
Our methods are simple, cost effective and replicable. We encourage communities to recognise & report rabid dogs, care for & protect dogs with vaccination, and help bite victims get treatment through active and thought-provoking sessions.
Lessons & activities
We use an array of teaching methods including drawing, acting, flashcards, video, props and demonstration to deliver the message of rabies prevention and ensure it is memorable. Each section of the session has plenary activities aimed to review what has been learnt and not only to make sure all children understand the message, but also that the children take the message home to their parents, family and friends. The teachers pack include lesson plans, teachers notes, curricula links, power point presentations, worksheets, extension activities and FAQs.
- Come with us as an education volunteer to teach children and help reach communities through our mass awareness drives in India.
- Follow our blog, Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates from the teams.
- Help support the programme by fundraising so we can reach more schools and communities in our project areas!.
- Give Rs.300 to teach a child and vaccinate a dog.
- Support our schools for just Rs.2500 per month.
School play
The ‘Lyssa’ plays are enjoyed by all ages and can be performed in any setting. Told through a young central character and their friendship with a stray dog - the story is relatable to children and stimulates responsibility. The play is performed by their classmates, peer-to-peer, so that the messages are memorable. Through storytelling, we engage children, their teachers and parents to act for rabies eradication.
Pedal cinema
A moving image can say a thousand words! Our wonderful back-pack cinema is pedal-powered and portable allowing us to show local- language education cartoons and films in any environment, meaning infrastructure is no barrier to our life-saving lessons. Films are produced in multiple local languages, replicated for each project location.
Supporting teachers
We work with teachers for an ongoing source of rabies knowledge in the community. In each school we visit we deliver teaching materials for schools to educate their classes about rabies, year-on-year. Our wall posters remain in classrooms, providing a permanent reminder in schools of the key first aid advice that can protect children in a dog bite emergency. Please see our resources section for further materials for use in the classroom and community centres.
Monitoring
For every school we visit - we record who, when, where and what we did to teach children and communities entered via Rabies App to give real time project management and mapped records of our reach. We complete community and schools’ studies to understand the barriers and behaviours that perpetuate human life loss to rabies, and measure how our interventions work to address these. Our local team keep in touch with schools and communities to receive feedback and give ongoing support.