political process draws upon different interests than the
process of selecting community volunteers. It has been
argued that different constellations of interests make up
the political landscape of a community [62,63]. In this
paper, we see how those who took charge of selecting
members of the VHTs ignored the concerns raised by
community members. The local government and
AMREF staff, who were supposed to supervise the whole
process, did not interest themselves in how the selection
of VHTs was carried out on the ground to ensure that
the guidelines were followed by the local authorities,
thus ignoring the evidence, documented in the community
development literature, that local leaders act as
“gate keepers” to their community and may usurp the
power of the local communities as shown in typical
cases of elite capture [64,65].
Secondly, guidelines set by the national government
without input from the local community will not reflect
local realities. Lack of flexibility in the guidelines to suit
each community opens up the way for manipulation that
even proper supervision may not help. For instance, setting
literacy requirements for VHTs played into the
hands of powerful local leaders who are usually among
the few literate people in a typical rural community. Not
enforcing the prohibition on local leaders serving on
VHTs also allowed the local leaders to usurp power.
Both laxity and strict adherence to the guidelines served
the interests of those already in powerful positions in
the community.
Thirdly, our findings show that the majority of the
members of the community did not consider the selected
VHTs to possess the characteristics of helpers.
This means that communities have their own expectations
about who is best positioned to help. Indeed, many
people in the community were frustrated that they were
not consulted, as they felt they had better knowledge of
the people they trust to help them. This means that in
initiating the concept of VHTs, the government may not
have fully understood that communities have their own
helping structures that they trust and support.
Lastly, because the majority in the community did not
trust the helping credentials of those selected to help
them with health-related issues, they resented them and
denied them the expected community support. This is
what happens when communities are sidelined in issues
that pertain to them, when they feel they ought to be
consulted and their opinions taken seriously [65]. To
adapt to this resentment, the VHTs altered their working
methods in ways that sought to use authority and power
that was not derived from the community mandate and
thus alienated them further. Because many on the VHTs
were local leaders, once they lost community support,
they resorted to relying on the authority of their leadership
positions. This is perhaps why the Ministry’s
guidelines explicitly barred local leaders from being
members of the VHTs. The VHTs, who were supposed
to be trusted and friendly helpers, soon turned into a
force that was feared and resented by those whom they
were meant to help. In the absence of financial incentives,
the resulting scenario was ripe for a decline in
motivation among VHTs and their eventual resignation.
The natural helper model advises that identifying the
“right persons” from informal helping networks should
precede the determination of training and work requirements;
such requirements should fit those selected
[39,41]. Accordingly, the chosen individuals in that
group would be highly respected, trusted in the community
and more likely to be motivated to volunteer. The
NHM offers a participatory process that locates the
selection of community volunteers at the grass-root level
in communities and may avoid the setbacks resulting
from elite capture, as documented by the findings
described in this paper. The natural helper model offers
a framework through which the community would be
more engaged in order to select VHT members that are
trusted and supported by the community members and
lead to better outcomes in CHW programmes.
Limitations of the study
This qualitative study was carried out in one rural community
in central Uganda, and while the results provide
important insights into the factors that play a role in the
functioning of village health teams and contribute to the
understanding of processes of volunteering, recruitment
and motivation more generally, they remain limited in
their generalizability. Having said that, the study community
is fairly typical of many rural communities in
Africa, and consequently, results are likely to be transferable
to other similar settings in Uganda and perhaps
beyond.
Conclusion
The NHM process better identifies the people who will
freely and informally interact with the target community
without appearing confrontational or exhibiting unnecessary
power and authority. As has been noted, the
value of the community health worker is in his/her embeddedness
in the community [11]. The NHM offers a
framework for identifying those natural helpers already
embedded in the community by surveying the informal
helping networks. The actual process of identifying these
informal networks and discovering the various “natural
helpers” to whom nodes of community members are
linked may be a time-consuming process. However, for
long-term national programmes for whom sustainability
is key, the trade-offs between time spent and quick recruitment
is worth it. If tried with due diligence and
given the time and resources necessary for initial