---
id: "coronavirus-smarter-crowdsourcing:strategies/Partner-with-local-community-organizations-to-recr"
type: "GovLab policy strategy"
title: "Partner with local community organizations to recruit and hire contact tracers with community-based…"
url: "https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/strategies/partner-with-local-community-organizations-to-recr"
summary: "Partner with local community organizations to recruit and hire contact tracers with community-based knowledge and experience. Governments should partner with local community organizations to identify contact tracers with the trust and knowledge of the local community. Selecting the right messenger is an important step to building trust,allowing for the cases and contacts to reveal details about who they have been in contact with and when."
source: "The GovLab (coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org)"
licence: "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)"
---

# Partner with local community organizations to recruit and hire contact tracers with community-based…

Partner with local community organizations to recruit and hire contact tracers with community-based knowledge and experience. Governments should partner with local community organizations to identify contact tracers with the trust and knowledge of the local community. Selecting the right messenger is an important step to building trust,allowing for the cases and contacts to reveal details about who they have been in contact with and when.

- Timeframe: 1-3 Months (immediate)
- Audience: Civil Society, Vulnerable Populations, Organized Civil Society, Nonprofits
- Type: Partnerships, Capacity Building, Vulnerable Populations
- Recommendation: [Localization](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/recommendations/localization)
- Part of: [Smarter Crowdsourcing in the Age of Coronavirus](https://coronavirus.smartercrowdsourcing.org/)

## Actions governments should take

1. Develop criteria that outlines profiles of organizations and people from the local community, that have the requisite knowledge of the community .
2. Meet with local authorities and key stakeholders (women, youths, older people) and discuss the importance of the contact tracers.
3. Establish a contract with local organizations to identify and recruit potential members of the contact tracing workforce
4. Provide financing and administrative support to allow the local community to make recruitment decisions
5. Partner with a local university or community based organization to hire, manage and/or train the contact tracing workforce
6. Develop plans for training and managing new contact tracing “employees” who are not full time employees of the public health system.

## Examples from around the world

1. [Spain hired and trained community health workers to support contact tracing efforts for tuberculosis, particularly in neighborhoods with a large number of immigrants. The government hired community health workers from countries in North Africa because they had the necessary language skills and the cultural knowledge to successfully engage with hard to reach immigrants groups. The use of these workers increased trust in the contact tracing system and improved outcomes.](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-12-158)