CHE - Community Health Evangelism

        	              
What is CHE?



womenatwellCommunity Health Evangelism (CHE) is a tool that helps communities around the world, empowering them to overcome poverty, disease and hopelessness by mobilizing their God-given potential and available resources. Medical personnel spend a few years evaluating a community and looking for ways to enter that community. Sometimes a health fair or a health screening for school children is set up. Then a discussion with the community begins around the findings and a committee is developed which chooses 10-15 volunteers who are willing to get additional training.




For the next two years, trainers go to the community on a weekly basis to give a health or development lesson along with a moral or spiritual lesson. As everyone sits in a circle and learns from each other, there is plenty of audience participation and illustrations are given, rather than just a lecture.




During the following week, these volunteers take this information and go from house to house, reteaching the same principles. Part of the strategy is not to have large, outside-funded projects but to get the community to take ownership of their own health and development needs, and to help them understand that with a change in lifestyle, along with utilizing their local resources, they can accomplish much. The goal is for a strong community development health program with three or four trainers who can then move on to work in other villages after five to seven years.




Learn more about the CHE movement by participating in one of the Multiplying Light and Truth through Community Health Evangelism book courses from EFCA EQUIP. Interact with Stan Rowland, author of the book, and others involved in CHE. Visit EFCA EQUIP and click on the course names to learn more or contact equip@efca.org.




LifeWind, the leading proponent of CHE, trains many people throughout the world. In their CHE program, "local volunteers are equipped and empowered to:



    

  • evangelize their community, making new followers of Jesus
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  • nurture disciples, strengthening the church
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  • improve sanitation, preventing diseases
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  • enhance agriculture, increasing food production
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  • create new enterprises, escaping dependency
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  • utilize appropriate technologies, fostering sustainability"
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SudanA new branch has developed called Global CHE whose concept is to get local community participation in solving local problems by using an adult education format with participation of the learners. It is also evangelistic as it combines one hour of a health lesson with one hour of a moral lesson (in some communities) or a Biblical lesson on a variety of topics.



Why CHE?



Because it isn’t very costly, CHE allows the gospel to get into communities, even resistant communities, because their felt needs will be met. Personnel are able to teach about prevention, as it is the key to long-term health, stopping some diseases from developing in the first place.




They are able to teach programs about:



    

  • sanitation
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  • clean water
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  • nutrition
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  • AIDS prevention with abstinence programs 
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Many of the CHE principles can easily apply to church planting models, multiplying and beginning a movement, rather than establishing an institution that can become stagnant while meeting the urgent needs, not looking at the bigger picture.



What success has been accomplished?



CHE is holistic, as it works with all social, health, psychological and spiritual aspects of life. There are some bright successes in the Philippines, southeast Congo, Kenya and Uganda. A modified CHE program was developed with Central African Republic refugees in Cameroon. They continue to meet on a weekly basis with both health/development-Agroforestry lessons, along with teaching moral lessons and chronological Bible stories. In Meskine and Gamboula hospital in Cameroon, presentations of the chronological stories of the Bible and teaching about who Jesus is have been well received.



More information