Lwala Community Alliance (Lwala) aims to build the capacity of rural communities to advance their own comprehensive wellbeing. Their solutions place communities at the forefront of the design, implementation, and evaluation of the multi-dimensional causes of poor health.

Lwala’s community-led health model rests on 4 key pillars: community committees, health centres, Community Health Workers (CHWs), and data. Core to their model is the recruitment, training, supervision and payment of traditional birth attendants as CHWs - they transform these women into the greatest champions of maternal and child health.

Lwala is focused on leveraging their proven model to improve maternal and child health outcomes for the 1 million people living in Migori County, as well as supporting county and national-level policy change, ultimately driving high-quality health care for all Kenyans. The team at Lwala are successfully driving policy change, including government payment of CHWs, improvements to CHW supervision, and adoption of Lwala’s obstetric haemorrhage protocols.

As a Kenyan-founded and Kenyan-led organisation, Lwala have found that when communities lead, change is lasting. Yearly, Lwala serve approximately 150,000 people in Kenya, constantly fighting for agency, health and wholeness of life for all.

This unique model has led to profound reductions in child mortality, a 98% skilled delivery rate, virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and a 300% increase in contraceptive uptake. Lwala-trained and supported CHWs are also more than 5 times as likely to be knowledgeable of danger signs in pregnancy and early infancy than status quo CHWs.