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[ Recorded presentation ] Recorded presentation

Community Health Workers in Tobago build a community response to human rights violations

Sergio Matos, CHW, Community Health Worker Network of NYC, 425 East 25th Street, Box 616, New York City, NY 10010, 718-703-9340, smatos@momsandkids.org and Deborah Williams, CHW, PRYDE-Parenting Resiliency in Youth Development and Empowerment, Black Rock Regional Multipurpose Complex, Black Rock, Trinidad and Tobago.

Community Health Workers in Tobago have built a community-driven response to human rights violations in the region. PRYDE started out as a project targeting kids who were not attending school. The project utilized CHWs to locate children absent from school and work with their families to get the children back to school. CHWs found that most parents were young single moms who faced numerous challenges and school was not a priority. Discussions with these young parents showed that their top four concerns were rape, incest, violence against women and poverty. In a direct response to the needs of these communities, PRYDE changed its focus to address these human rights violations and engage the young women in developing their esteem, skills, social capital and parenting abilities. The CHWs in Tobago have taken a strentgh-based approach to working with families that has helped these young woman to organize their communities against the culture of violence and human rights violations against women. Ms. Deborah Williams, a CHW who runs PRYDE will present this work.

Learning Objectives:

Keywords: Violence Prevention, Community Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

[ Recorded presentation ] Recorded presentation

Public Health & Human Rights: The Role of CHWs

The 134th Annual Meeting & Exposition (November 4-8, 2006) of APHA