The fourth blog of our Pura Vida! Blog Series on Caribe de Cariari is so chock full of information and videos that we needed to give it its own webpage. Click here to read and watch.
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8/18/2010 - This past Spring, World Connect supported its first projects in Mali! Community Leaders and Peace Corps Volunteers across Mali were awarded grants as part of our World Connect Grants Program. Today, we want to share with you the success of one of those projects.
The Rural Maternity Improvements project in Kati, Mali is enabling a rural community health center to improve conditions for labor and delivery. This project will make the health center’s maternity ward a more inviting, safer and cleaner place to give birth. It will also improve access to health care services for mothers and their newborns.
The health center is located in Dombila, a rural community in the town of Kati within the province of Koulikoro. There are approximately 375 women of childbearing age in Dombila. Most of these women insist on home deliveries; increasing their risk of complications, infections and other negative health outcomes. According to the women of Dombila, they currently choose not to deliver at the health center because they do not feel at home in the aging facilities with rickety delivery tables, sporadic electricity, no running water, and none of the comforts of home. Condistions in Dombila reflect the national profile in Mali where less than 50% of births are attended by skilled health personnel (1); a major contributing factor to the country’s high number of maternal deaths. Through this World Connect Grants project, Community Leaders are seeking to reverse these dangerous trends through this project. By promoting pride, ownership and quality health services in the maternity ward in their community, these leaders hope to increase the number of deliveries attended at the center and, in turn, decrease maternal and newborn death, injury, and disease.
The ASACO of Dombila, a community health committee in the region, is partnered with World Connect to improve the center and make it more accessible for pregnant women, mothers and their infants. The health center is staffed by a skilled and motivated team of health care professionals; however, providing high quality pre and postnatal care in this impoverished setting with limited resources is extremely challenging. The ASACO and maternity ward staff have been working to improve the rural health system by organizing volunteer community health workers, managing equipment, finances and human resources, and launching community health promotion activities.
With support from a World Connect Grant, the ASACO and the maternity staff are applying several simple solutions to provide a better environment in which the women of Dombila can deliver their babies. They are purchasing new, high quality birthing tables and installing an additional solar panel at the center. This solar panel will provide additional power to pump running water into the center’s sinks and prevent blackouts. The project will also provide the women of Dombila with resources to decorate the maternity ward to make the space their own. The ASACO will also organize community education activities about the importance of giving birth in a health center. Pregnant women, mothers, newborns, and maternity staff will all benefit from the improved maternity facility and improved access to health services.
In a recent dispatch from the field, the Peace Corps Volunteer on site reported that a crew is currently installing the new solar panels:
“The whole village is really excited. Word is getting out that pretty soon, if you come give birth at the maternity, you don’t have to do it by a dim lamp light.”
Additionally, the company installing the solar panel gave the center several options to improve running water in the maternity ward. Community Leaders decided to provide additional funding from their savings in order to also install a solar-heated baby bath, bringing the community contribution on this project to nearly 45%! This system pumps water and then sanitizes and heats it to an ideal temperature to wash newborns. At the center, newborns are typically washed every six hours to keep them free from infection. Preparing these baths involves family members of the new mother and newborn hauling water from the well and firewood from the brush to the center, multiple times a day. The new solar-heated baby bath system will eliminate this heavy lifting by providing a warm, sanitary place for cleaning newborns right at the center.
With these additional contributions from the community, this World Connect Grants project is having a greater impact than we could have imagined. We are honored to support the people of Mali through this project and look forward to reporting the final results.
(1) UNICEF, 2003-2008. Mali DHS and WHO.
Map & Flag of Mali - courtesy of travel.state.gov
8/13/2010 - *This is the third blog in a series documenting a recent trip to visit Kids to Kids projects in Costa Rica by Patrick, Kids to Kids Program Coordinator. To read the first blog, please click here. To read the second blog, click here.
About Copey de Dota
Copey de Dota is a quiet, tiny town located WAY on the top of a mountain in the breathtaking region of central Costa Rica. Far removed from anything resembling a big city, only one bus infrequently makes its way up and down the mountain to and from Copey. Kids from Copey have to ride this bus down the mountain to get to the nearest high school, which makes finishing school a big challenge for youth in Copey. Jobs are similarly hard to come by, with most teens and adults needing to travel down to larger towns or to one of the region’s coffee farms for work.
Because of the town’s isolation, there is a lack of fun activities for youth. Aside from the one large pley (soccer field) in the middle of town, afterschool activities are almost non-existent in Copey. There are no art programs in the local schools and limited ways for youth to express their creativity.
Despite these difficult circumstances, there are dedicated Community Leaders working hard to create positive change in Copey. With these leaders and the local Peace Corps Volunteer, World Connect was able to make a major impact in Copey through the Kids to Kids project “Arte por la Paz”.
The Project
Arte por la Paz (Art for Peace) is a dynamic Kids to Kids project that explored themes of peace and non-violence, both locally and globally, through various art forms such as painting, photography, mosaic, theater and dance. The project took place over a three-month period and consisted of three main parts. First, there was a weekly Art for Peace workshop series where the kids participated in team-building exercises and explored many different art forms often for the first time. The second part of the project, a community mural, allowed the kids to put into practice the team building and artistic lessons learned from the workshop series. They drew a mural design, transferred their design to a public space in the town center, and painted an AMAZING mural that caught the attention of national media in Costa Rica!! [To read more about the national media attention this project received, click here.] Finally, thanks to the Kids to Kids Grant Award, the kids were also able to travel outside of Copey to a regional Art for Peace conference. At the conference they met other groups of inspiring kids from many different parts of Costa Rica, and worked collaboratively not just to learn more about peace and nonviolence, but to learn how they could spread it throughout their own communities. At the end of the conference, this dynamic group of young leaders from Copey won a prize for best dance!
Video: In the words of the Peace Corps Volunteer
Check out a quick video of the Peace Corps Volunteer discussing the impact of Kids to Kids on Copey.
From the Kids to Kids Program Coordinator
“One thing that was so clear to me on this trip to Costa Rica was that Kids to Kids Members have a knack for approving awesome projects in high-need communities. My visit to Copey de Dota was a fantastic example of this. The community is WAY off the beaten path. First you have to drive down, down, down one mountain into a beautiful green valley, and then you have to drive up, up, up to the top of another mountain to arrive in Copey. The road leading up to Copey winds back and forth around these steep hairpin turns; it feels like you’re driving right up into the clouds. It’s hard to imagine anyone being able to make that trip very often, and shocking to know that so many kids make the trip every day by bus just to go to high school.
I spent a lot of time just walking around the town with the Peace Corps Volunteer, learning about the different projects that she had been working on and learning about the challenges that youth face in Copey. It’s a sleepy little town where kids have to work hard for the opportunity to get an education. But it’s towns like Copey where Kids to Kids can have an AMAZING impact by providing the support for fun, creative and unique projects. We visited the homes of some of the kids who participated in the Kids to Kids project, and I heard from them first-hand about how important the project was for their community and for their lives. They also showed me squares of a cool peace quilt that they had been working on in their most recent Art for Peace meeting! All in all, Copey de Dota was a powerful example of just why Kids to Kids is so important.”
Copey de Dota Moving Forward
The Community Leaders and Peace Corps Volunteer in Copey de Dota remain super committed to providing creative, fun and educational opportunities for local youth. As part of the March 2010 Kids to Kids grant cycle, Kids to Kids Members approved a second Grant Award for a new project in Copey entitled “Camp COCO” (Chicas Orgullosas Creando Opportunidades – Proud Girls Creating Opportunities). This project will provide girls from Copey and a neighboring town with their first opportunity to participate in a summer camp! At Camp COCO, the girls will participate in art projects, play games, learn about nature and the environment, learn about leadership and teamwork, and design community service projects to be carried out in their communities. World Connect is proud to continue supporting the youth of Copey de Dota through the Kids to Kids program!
To see more pictures of Kids to Kids impact in Copey de Dota, become a fan of Kids to Kids on Facebook and visit our photo albums. To support more Kids to Kids projects like these, please make a donation to the Kids to Kids All-Kids Fund here.
8/10/2010 - World Connect funded the Rabbits for Health project in Karambo, Rwanda during its first grant cycle for the World Connect Grants Program this past Spring. The Karambo Health Center and the Access Project will use their WCG grant award to supplement health services with a community rabbit farm and nutrition program. This project will improve nutrition in a community of over 2,000 households, specifically targeting malnourished children under the age of five.
We recently received an update from the Peace Corps Volunteer and Community Leader managing this project. They are in the process of securing a contractor to draw blue prints and start construction for the farm. Additionally, the Health Center staff is creating an electronic database of all children in the malnutrition program. They are working now to spread the word to mothers and children in the community on the importance of the good nutrition that will be further introduced and reinforced by the Rabbits for Health project.
We are thrilled with the progress that they are making and look forward to sharing further updates.
Photos - courtesy of Peace Corps Volunteer
Map of Rwanda - courtesy of travel.state.gov
