Establishing contact with the community comes after developing the Working Group team. The promoters of the scheme along with the Working Group should establish contact with the community either in an interpersonal manner or through group discussions. Initial discussions on health situation, financial needs for accessing health care services, community relationships and overall socio-economic conditions would be held. The idea of health micro-insurance should be brought into reference to the community during these discussions.
Establishing first contact through and holding initial discussions with existing CBOs within the community is a good idea, rather going about visiting households randomly. Since CBOs such as SHGs, cooperatives, federations etc are already into some kind of micro-finance activities and are expectedly aware about the local issues and problems, they are in a better position to give out details on community life.
While establishing contact with the community, it is important to keep the following points in mind:
- The community should be looked upon as partners in the process of setting-up the health micro-insurance scheme.
- Participation should not be limited only to having meetings with the community and giving away with the ideas
- It is important to educate the community in a participatory manner by relating to their everyday problems.
- Follow-up of suggestions given by the community is important
