This toolkit will guide community and faith leaders to use their own strengths, community connections, and resources to educate on how to prevent malaria and support proper treatment in local communities. Using the processes of social and behavior change (SBC), the toolkit will help leaders influence communities’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and social norms to help people adopt key behaviors to prevent and treat malaria.

The toolkit contains:

• Resources to learn more about malaria in your country or region.
• Tools for communicating effectively and creating lasting behavior change.
• A list of key actions to promote to fight malaria in your community.
• Steps for integrating malaria into your current work.
• Examples of community malaria activities.
• Strategies for being malaria advocates.

Leaders can use these tools to help local people and families change their everyday actions to prevent malaria and promptly and safely treat malaria if they become sick. Together we can help stop the spread of this disease, treat those who fall ill, and save lives.

This toolkit is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Breakthrough ACTION project.

How to Use This Toolkit

This toolkit includes four different content sections. Leaders can access the content of the toolkit in any order. Please feel free to explore the content and use the most helpful resources to you and your organization.

• Context: Explains the importance of both community and faith-based organizations and understanding the malaria context of your country and community and provides resources for learning more about malaria in your country; reviews what social and behavior change is, why it is important for stopping malaria, and what the key elements of a successful social and behavior change strategy are.
• Malaria Actions to Promote: Describes key behaviors to promote in your community to stop the spread of malaria illness and death.
• Using Malaria SBC in Your Work: Explains the seven steps for planning a strategy to integrate malaria social and behavior change into your existing work.
• Advocacy: Demonstrates how to use advocacy as a tool for overcoming barriers and demanding the resources and tools needed to enact behavior change.