Mission 1000

About this project

<p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14px">The health status of Roma is significantly low, as confirmed by the data, the average life expectancy of Roma is on average six years shorter than that of the non-Roma population. The infant mortality rate is on average three times higher among Roma children. Moreover, Slovakia generally faces significant challenges in ensuring enough health professionals per capita, which has an adverse impact on the most vulnerable groups. Sufficient health and social support for women before and during pregnancy, and after childbirth, is often absent in marginalized Roma communities (MRC). Project builds on two decades of successful development of health mediation, fieldwork in the MRC, and ongoing volunteers’ project. The project is centered on health mediation in the environment of socially disadvantaged communities, which focuses on the first key 1000 days from the conception of the child. Community capacity provides all care programme for pregnant women, during and after their stay in the maternity ward, and strengthens their mutual relationships among communities. Interventions, both at home and in the hospital, shall be carried out by Babice – Roma women health mediators. Another key part of the project is communication advocacy and outreach to the general public. Project partners&nbsp;<span style="color: #000000">will provide expertise in advocacy campaigning preparation as well as support to strategic communication design and implementation and m</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-size: 14px">utual exchange of know- how.</span></span></span></span></p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The goal of bilateral cooperation in the Mission 1000 project was share experiences and knowledge with the result in creation of comprehensive communication strategy, focused not only on the project result, but also on self, individual and systems advocacy. The donor partner, Norsensus Mediaforum, offered years of expertise in international projects, management and project development, for creation and maintenance of advocacy campaign preparation as well as support to strategic communication design and implementation. Their ability of storytelling was a very useful asset to catch the interest of the general public and different stakeholders. With the help of the donor partner, the Mission 1000 communication strategy was a huge success, with a very large number of positive feedbacks from various local and regional entities (such as helping professions, public bodies, medical staff, etc.) and wide public. An emphasis was given for building deeper relationship and wide networks, in the communities, on the local scale as well as on national scale. As an extension of the communication strategy, a publication was created, with achieved results of the Mission 1000 programme, as well as advocacy recommendations for other NGO, helping professions and healthcare providers. Based on our experience, we can say that bilateral relations are important as they emphasise building mutual trust and understanding between actors from different countries as the basis for securing positive, mutually beneficial, long-term, and sustainable transnational relationships. We would like to continue working with the donor partner on supporting the professional development of the core staff of both organisations and providing a platform to share experience and strengthen mutual cooperation.

Project partners

• Norsensus Mediaforum Donor project partner· Norway
• Hospital with polyclinic Spišská Nová Ves, a.s. Project partner· Slovakia
• Femina Spiš.o.z Project partner· Slovakia