PIP: To help the 50,000 people living in Saradidi improve their community, the Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya of originally organized a health project in 1979 as the cornerstone of an extensive rural development effort to reach people through parish and congregational committees. The Saradidi Health Program intended to reduce the high rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity by directly involving the community in the provision of its own health care and the improvement of its quality of life. Each village elected its own health and development commitee and later selected volunteers to work in the community. Training was given to those selected to organize teir communities for the health program--the Nyamrerwa or Village Health Helpers (VHHS). Their task was not simply to provide information about appropriate health practices, but the much more difficult 1 of spanning the 2 worlds of medical science and traditional beliefs and practices. Over the course of several years, the experience at Saradidi proved that these 2 worlds need not be in competition. They could be complementary provided that the VHHS were capable of integrating their newly-acquired knowledge with the common sense of centuries-old practice. An evaluation of the program has shown that the VHHS have now begun to accoomplish their task of influencing the practices and changing the attitudes of the people in Saradidi. The nonformal approach is effective because it involves the whole community in the process of promoting good health. The VHHS act as a catalyst, bringing together useful information and practices from the outside and making them part of the community's own information and practices.