The GESCOME difference : lessons learned from Gestion Communautaire de Sante Environnementale (GESCOME) : the Environmental Health Project II CESH Benin activity

This report highlights Benin Gescome (Gestion Communautaire de Santé Environnementale - Community management of environmental health) activities and results to draw lessons learned. GESCOME was based on respect for local context and knowledge and emphasized the importance of local level decision making.

Several valuable lessons were learned from the Benin experience. The Benin Gescome approach is an effective instrument for stimulating community changes in health understanding, and probably health practices, as well as building and maintaining physical infrastructure (hardware) for diarrheal disease prevention in rural towns.

Gescome showed that, with minimal external supervision, local communities can successfully
establish and manage effective, decentralized, autonomous decision-making structures. To attain these results, communities must develop and master low-cost simple technologies that provide a desirable public service sustained and financed by public support. Community participation and gender are key issues in this approach. The key to success of the Gescome approach lies in its participatory nature and incentives to social change through dealing with the belief systems of the participating communities and roles of men and women in the community.