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WATCH YOUR HEALTH

By Phil Bartle, PhD

Training Handout

Staying Healthy and Happy is also a good Strategy for Successful Mobilization

No matter what our occupation, we do it better when we are healthy.

Community mobilization has some special issues related to keeping healthy, and also emphasises the need to be happy as well as medically fit.

Often, for example, a mobiliser is working in a community far from home and from the familiar people and things of life. It sometimes means working in a language other than the one learned from infancy. It also means working with individuals not well known to us. All these add stress and anxiety to the work. Furthermore, to be successful in mobilising not only means being able to expend much energy, and stamina required to expend it over extended periods of time, it also requires maintaining a positive attitude, and to keep from getting depressed in the face of the many disappointments that come with the job.

There are some tips here on how to get or keep happy when we do not feel like it. There are also tips on how to keep medically fit that go beyond the taking of prophylaxis pills, drinking uncontaminated water, and using mosquito nets when needed.

Many if not most mobilisers who become ill in their work do so because they do not watch for the signs. They do not accept that the work has specific demands and that the change in location puts more on to them, and can be a health threat. Denial is not an ally here, but a factor in losing your good health. Therefore we add this module. It is not enough to leave it to the medical pamphlets and books, but should be included as a topic here in the training of community mobilisers. It is applicable, too, to all aid workers.

Read and heed.

© Copyright 1967, 1987, 2007 Phil Bartle
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Last update: 2012.03.23