Dzemeni Community Health
Empowerment Initiative
The Challenge
Acute respiratory infections remain a leading cause of under-five mortality worldwide. In rural Ghana, preventable exposure to biomass cooking smoke, poor water and sanitation, and limited healthcare access significantly increase the risk of severe respiratory illness among young children.
Our Response
Our Vision
Children and families flourish when empowered youth support behavior change and remain engaged through pathways to skills, entrepreneurship, and employment.
Our Mission
The Dzemeni Community Health Empowerment Initiative equips rural youth to become community service leaders and agents of change. Through practical skills training, leadership development, and service-based learning, young people promote the adoption of evidence-based behaviors that improve health and safety at the household level. Our Youth Service and Development Corps pairs capacity building with community service, creating pathways to entrepreneurship, employment, and lifelong leadership.
Our Program Model
The Dzemeni Community Empowerment Initiative is implemented through the Youth Service and Development Corps—a first-of-its-kind service corps model that integrates youth leadership, household health promotion, and vocational pathways into a single, scalable delivery system.
We LEAD
Forming the identity of the Corps through discipline, values, responsibility, and civic pride.
Youth build the confidence and character needed to lead behavior change in their communities, emerging as role models, household educators, peer mentors, and community advocates.
We ACT
Forming the operational engine of the Corps through service, skills, and community action.
Youth promote behavior change and build supportive household infrastructure through home visits, health education, and practical
service. This pillar turns training into action.
We THRIVE
Forming the long-term resilience of the Corps and the communities it serves.
Youth build pathways to employment, enterprise, and cooperative business as communities sustain
measurable improvements in health, safety, and well-being. This pillar transforms the Corps into a workforce and enterprise pipeline that sustains gains in household health, safety, and well-being over time.
Learn More:
Partner With Us
Partner with the Youth Service and Development Corps to strengthen youth leadership, improve
household health and safety, and sustain measurable community impact.
Implemented by: Festus Health Foundation Ghana
Supported by: Gangarosa International Health Foundation
We LEAD – We ACT – We THRIVE