People must be exposed to “good health” messages. Many of the people in Central Asia have wrong ideas and wrong views about their health and how to treat their illnesses. For example, a young mother in Afghanistan with a child with diarrhea believes that liquids should be kept from the child for five days. As the result of this poor understanding one out of every four children die before they reach 5 years of age. Communities must be helped to take responsibility for spreading "good health" messages themselves. Therefore, a key goal of this program is to convey health information and to build capacity in community action and leadership development.

JDA trains community volunteers during four months on various health and life issue topics. These volunteers disseminate their new knowledge to families within their communities. JDA continues to advise the committee pertaining to monitoring, evaluation, and general leadership. The volunteers are encouraged to develop future volunteers, and to identify, analyze, and solve community problems by mobilizing community resources. Neighborhood improvement projects may address the need for clean water, litter clean-up and disposal, utility distribution upgrades, community gardens and/or animal raising, etc.

The below are suggested ways that you can donate to our community health projects.