Published Date: 04 April 2023
Each year, the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases’ Festival brings together some of the most exciting creative work worldwide, aiming to tackle complex challenges in tropical and infectious diseases.
Now, in its 7th annual awards year, the festival celebrates “beautiful, powerful, moving pieces of work, with inspiring and innovative collaborations between the creative industries and the field of public health.”
This year saw a huge amount of wonderful entries across the 15 themes, ranging from digital art and animation through to education, campaigns and advocacy, among many others.
We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that WMP has scooped the prize for Community Engagement at this year’s award ceremony. Our new video entitled — The Community Voices: Empowering and partnering with communities to fight mosquito-borne diseases won the prize and helped showcase how we engage with local communities across different parts of the world to deliver our Wolbachia method.
The award “recognises the fundamental commitment by WMP to community engagement, which underlies every part of the programme.”
The award panel wrote: “The World Mosquito Program approach rests on listening to communities suffering from dengue and other diseases, so that activities can be tailored from the early stages to the community needs and concerns, working closely with Community Reference Groups and community leaders, for example.
“In this way, WMP is rethinking community engagement in health programmes, whether by thinking of trust as being "borrowed" rather than gained, all the way to planning sustainable exit strategies following interventions.”
In February, we celebrated community engagement week across our digital channels. Our Director of Community Engagement, Alan Mee, reflected on why understanding the unique characteristics and specific needs of a community is something that is central to WMP’s approach.
We’d also like to extend our congratulations to all the other great entries and winners of the 2023 awards.
