In Bangassou, U-Reporters trained to help prevent Ebola

At a training workshop in Bangassou, UNICEF has been working with the local U-Reporter committees with a focus on capacity-building in communication skills and Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE). This initiative marks a key milestone in preparations for the response to the Ebola outbreak currently affecting the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The aim of this training was to build the U-Reporters’ capacity in communication skills and Risk Communication and Community Engagement. We brought together the local U-Reporter Committees here in Bangassou as part of our preparations for the response to the Ebola outbreak,” explains Jean Félix Riva, Youth & Adolescent Development Officer at UNICEF.

The session took the form of interactive presentations followed by discussions, enabling participants to gain a better understanding of how the epidemic spreads, how to communicate effectively in high-risk situations, and awareness-raising techniques tailored to their specific environments (markets, neighbourhoods, stadiums, social media). 

“The aim is for young people to truly take ownership of these tools and, in turn, become reliable messengers within their communities,” explains Jean Félix Riva, who sees this participatory approach as the key to lasting acceptance of prevention messages.

For Balego Amos, aged 23, a sixth-form student and a member of U-Report Bangassou (Disability Committee) for over three years, this training session fulfilled a long-standing expectation: “It’s the very first one I’ve been invited to.”

He recalls being particularly struck by the previous visit by the Minister of Health, who had trained “almost everyone in Bangassou, from all walks of life” — shopkeepers, motorbike taxi drivers and canoeists. “For us U-Reporters, it was very inspiring; we want training as such to build our capacity,” he said at the time — a call that UNICEF, through this session, heeded directly and turned into concrete action.

On the ground, this investment by UNICEF builds on a youth-led commitment that is already very real and well-established. Amos and his peers travel around football grounds and organise neighbourhood talks to win over the most sceptical – those who, as he observed with the cholera outbreak, sometimes think that ‘it’s just a business’. His approach: patience and repetition. “Someone who was sceptical at stage one may be won over after attending our awareness-raising sessions at stages two, three or four,” he explains — a community-driven energy that UNICEF now aims to organise, professionalise and scale up using enhanced tools

By relying on local U-Reporters committees, which have already been involved in community awareness-raising for several years, UNICEF is laying the groundwork for a rapid and coordinated response, capable of containing rumours as effectively as the virus should the disease cross the border. Balego Amos sums up this strategy in his own words, almost as a motto: “Through ignorance, my people perish. Let us not overlook anything.” — a message that UNICEF, through this training, has chosen to amplify, by empowering the young people of Bangassou to spread it themselves, right down to the last neighbourhood.

UNICEF CAR's work in Ebola response is generously supported by the governments of the United States of America and Sweden.