Ogun State Chapter

The Sickle Cell Awareness Walk and Community Outreach organized by Save the Next Generation Ogun State Chapter occurred on the 20th of June, 2026 in Panseke, Abeokuta and was a strategic community level intervention aimed to prevent the social transmission of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). The event was designed in line with global health strategies which seek to offer community driven education on knowledge, attitudes and practices on genetic based diseases.

The main goal of the outreach was to increase community knowledge of genotypes and stimulate prospective reproductive decision making among community members. Save the Next Generation volunteers led by the Pathfinders Sickle Cell Initiative led a community wide walk through the main Panseke areas, with banners and placards announcing messages of the need for community members to know their genotype, an approach that catered to community members with varying literacy levels ensuring that the message of SCD prevention through community awareness was well communicated and received. A community wide family sensitive public address system was used by the volunteers to promote the message to community members in the later parts of the outreach.

These community outreach information, education and communication carried out by Save the Next Generation volunteers was aimed at addressing community stigmatization and social challenge to SCD prevention through direct community level education on the message of Sickle Cell genotype compatibility prevention of transmission. A strategic partnership formed with the YALI Network Ogun State represents a successful social innovation to facilitate community activating and building on established network of the YALI platform with a large number of committed volunteers, and working together with the Pathfinders community volunteers to reach as many community members as possible in the implementation of the outreach.

The partnership also enabled the provision of 32 volunteers dedicated to the outreach, who were actively engaged in participatory, community based, face to face community education. It created room for volunteers to personally interact with community members and offer real-time clarification on complex genetic effects and genotype-based decisions and concern, and to address the socio-cultural stigmatization experienced by community members who are known to have SCD warriors, through the distribution of educational flyers and hand fans detailing messages of education. This community engagement approach to community sensitization addressed community barriers and social stigmatization about knowledge of genotypes to reduce community's fear of screening and testing for SCD. The distribution of free community education/awareness flyers and hand fans served as ready to use community-based reminders of educational content. The logistics of providing community health educational materials to community members and free health restoring drugs showed the community based approach of the intervention as well as the holistic view of the community healthcare approach.