By: Yayne Hailu, Associate Director, Communications
One of the guiding values of the END Fund is servant leadership – the practice of serving the broader goals and vision of the neglected tropical disease (NTD) community as a whole. Given this mandate, we always aim to leverage our unique assets to further the collective effort in ending NTDs—which is what we had in mind when creating the Listening Tour.
We recognized that it takes individual stories to lend color and specificity to the bigger story – from the young man waiting in the mass drug administration (MDA) line for lymphatic filariasis treatment, to the program directors and government officials who work together to put health systems in place. By demonstrating that even though we may focus on different diseases, may have faced different challenges in our fight against NTDs, or even have different motivations for taking up this cause, our collective goal of ending these disease remains the same – and the stories we tell are important to get us there.
We are proud and so honored to have the Listening Tour recognized and presented with the Audio Communications Award at the 2017 ISNTD Festival last week in London. We would like to thank ISNTD as well as all of the participants of Listening Tour who generously shared their stories with us. We look forward to continuing to provide a platform for others to get their stories out into the world.