The Community Led Ebola Action (CLEA) has empowered communities to do their own analysis and take their own action to become Ebola-free in Sierra Leone. CLEA has focused on triggering collective action by inspiring communities to understand the urgency and the steps they take to protect themselves from Ebola. Community Mobilisers have facilitated this process and communities have modified norms, beliefs and behaviours in response to the conditions around them.

The CLEA Approach was used to trigger 9,285 communities in Sierra Leone as of April 2015. 100% of these communities developed action plans and these were followed up by more than 50,000 individual community visits by SMAC-trained Community Mobilisers. Significant reduction in unsafe burials and people with symptoms reporting within 24 hours were recorded over the course of these visits.

CLEA draws on successful examples of community participation and the use of Participatory Rural Appraisal in HIV and AIDS and other health programming. In particular, CLEA builds on the lessons and experience of over six years of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), a participatory approach to sanitation improvement.

CLEA was designed by SMAC, a group of five agencies (Centers for Disease Control, BBC Media Action, Focus 1000, GOAL and Restless Development) who have worked together to achieve zero new cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone through evidenced-based social mobilisation that engages individuals and communities and results in real behavior change.

The complete CLEA Field Manual, plus other SMAC resources such as Religious Leader training materials, Survivors Campaign materials, Radio Programming and Burial resources can be found on the resources page of the SMAC website.

Social Mobilisation Action Consortium (SMAC) / 2015 / Social Mobilisation Action Consortium (SMAC)