Stories

Camp provides students health knowledge to share with others

TANZANIA (December 2010)- Two hundred and fifty-two more Arusha Region students are now equipped with health knowledge that can be passed on to peers, friends, and family.  

During Global Service Corps'- a local implementing partner on PFD's Jatropha Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative (JANI) project- annual HIV/AIDS, Health, and Life Skills Day Camp secondary school students were equipped with knowledge about HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, nutrition, human rights, and life skills.

Every June GSC brings together college-bound Tanzanians and international volunteers to conduct two-week long workshops that provide students not only knowledge but life skills. Life skills such as setting goals, decision making, recognizing role models, and dealing with peer pressure, are essential to promoting behavior change that can decrease risky behavior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “It takes young people a lot more than knowing they should abstain from sex to avoid HIV. It also takes being prepared to say no in challenging situations, like those full of passion or peer pressure,” explains camp coordinator Jenaya Rockman. “Having goals and knowing how to reach them keeps students from behaviors they know might knock them off track, like getting infected with HIV or having a baby.”

In Tanzania, six out of every 100 people are infected with HIV. Young people ages 15 through 24 make up 60% of new infections each year. 

“Learning life skills changed me,” Meshack Solomon told students at Kaloleni Secondary School. Solomon was a camp participant six years ago. Now he is a camp teacher and the first in his family to complete form six and plan for college.

At camp students are encouraged to share what they have learned with family and friends.  Student leaders from each school are also trained as peer educators so they can run a health club that serves as a forum to educate other students in their schools.  Over the past 10 years camps have produced health clubs in 26 schools.

The clubs enable students to address one of the biggest challenges to combating HIV infection; the challenge of dissolving myths. On camp’s first day, 27 out of 30 students in one class raised their hands “yes” when asked if everyone who gets HIV dies from the virus. All 30 raised hands when asked if it can be spread by sharing a tooth brush.

2010 marks the camp’s 10th anniversary and brings the total number of graduates to over 2,000 and number of schools participating to 29.

Partners for Development was one of sixteen sponsors that helped support Global Service Corps’ annual health camp.

This year’s participating secondary schools included Arusha Day, Enaboishu and Kaloleni in Arusha and Engutoto, Irkisongo, Moringe Sokoine and Orkeeswa in Monduli.

TANZANIA (October 2009)- Naisula Estomiy is a 34-year old mother of two living in Olkereyan village on the outskirts of Arusha in Tanzania.  In June 2009, Naisula attended a poultry production training session sponsored by the USDA-funded Jatropha Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative (JANI) and implemented by Partners for Development and a number of other implementing partners.

Based on her intelligent questions and lively participation in the training, Naisula was selected by other villagers to become a chicken vaccinator.  With support from JANI staff, she set up a regular schedule of chicken vaccinations in her village to protect them from Newcastle disease- which kills 70% of chickens annually in Tanzania.

Before the vaccination program, villagers were unwilling to invest much in raising chickens since most of them died from Newcastle disease. They rarely provided food for their chickens and instead left them to scavenge for food.  The vaccination program has significantly lowered chicken losses and villagers now feed their chickens and experience higher yields.

Naisula has increased her flock by 200% and collects 15 eggs per day (as compared to the pre-vaccination time when a whole week often passed with no egg collection.)  Naisula is also able to collect a small fee for her vaccination rounds which reach 3,000 chickens every few months.

This income plus increased eggs and chicks has meant she can afford more food for her family and school fees for her two children.

Communities unite to support orphans and vulnerable children
 

Partners for Development began collaborating with Women In Nigeria (WIN) in Benue State in 1999, stimulating income generation by extending microfinance to rural communities. Since 2002, PFD and WIN have integrated community-based reproductive health and family planning interventions to address the needs of borrowers. In August 2008, PFD and WIN commenced an Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) program in two communities of Gboko Local Government Area, Benue State.

The OVC program strengthens community-based capacity for care and support of OVC and their families by providing primary services in education, psychosocial support and health. Community volunteers mentor OVC and deliver services within and outside Kids’ Clubs.

Prior to inception of the program, need was high and local infrastructure nearly nonexistent. WIN staff and the community volunteers had little knowledge of the issues of OVC and little capacity to address them. Issues such as best practices, sustainable OVC program design, implementation and monitoring, were foreign to WIN staff and volunteers.

PFD acknowledged the need for deliberate strategies to ensure the commencement of activities, and engaged WIN management and staff, local religious, community and government leaders and persons of influence to garner support for OVC and their families in the communities. PFD engendered community participation through mobilization activities, instituting needs-based service provision and participatory monitoring and evaluation aimed at strengthening community capacity to care and support children.

The program appealed to the strong Tiv tradition of caring for the disadvantaged; inherent in Tiv culture is the belief that the upbringing of children is the responsibility of all within the community. Knowledge of the program prompted Barrister Targema Takema, a local philanthropist from Akaajime, to provide his private facility at Mtagher Takema Community Development Center as donation to PFD and WIN for program use. The barrister had built this facility for his home community of Akaajime in 1996. Currently, WIN utilizes the center to host the Kids Club sessions, and conduct trainings and periodic program review meetings. Eighty children and their mentors regularly benefit from use of the facility.

During a mid-2010 monitoring visit, Ms. Rachel Kwagkho, OVC Coordinator, Gboko-South, remarked that “This program is useful in our community with many OVC need, but we only have a limited number who can enroll to attend Kids Club sessions. But the way the children in the program learn and relate with their peers now, every other child or caregiver regardless of their vulnerability in the community wants to belong to the program. So our biggest challenge now is how to cope with the high number of most-in-need children in the community."

“On behalf of myself and the school, it is our pleasure to be identified with this noble program in addition to using our school as a Kids’ Club center to support these children to grow into useful citizens.” – Mr. James O. Mamadu, Head Teacher of Islamic Primary School, Gboko-South, Benue State, at a 2010 meeting.

“Before now I never thought the OVC problem was my concern and had no exposure on working with children. This program has exposed me to trainings and changed my orientation towards care and support of children, especially with psychosocial support services to be useful citizens in the community.” – Mr. Amos Uzua, OVC Program Officer, WIN Benue State.

Micro-Credit leads to community improvements!

 

When Mr Shamaki Bello was installed District Head of Daddu District, his wife (the Gimbiya) suggested that the women should be mobilized into self help. Each woman was asked to contribute N20 per week, but Gimbiya Fatu soon noticed that some women were unable to pay the N20 because they were not engaged in any income generating activities. She discussed this with her husband, and he set about looking for opportunities to empower the Daddu women. It was at this point that he came in contact with Fantsuam Foundation. Fantsuam began work in Daddu District in 2004, and this was one of the first centres where the funds received from Partners for Development (PfD) were deployed.

 

Fantsuam Foundation’s mission is the elimination of poverty through integrated development programs, and this was precisely what Mr. Bello wanted for Daddu women. So a microfinance program was instituted for Daddu women, and this simple beginning of N5,000 microloans to the first 100 women in Daddu was the beginning of an economic revolution in Daddu District. The women went on to receive loans in the second and third cycles, N10,000 and N20,000 each respectively. At the end of the N20,000 loan cycle, the women decided that they had made enough savings and wanted to take a break from receiving any further loans. A total of N1,750,000 had been disbursed at Daddu from the microfinance program of PfD.

 

Mr. Bello, “My women decided to invest the profits of their microfinance businesses to set up two projects in Daddu District: The Community Hall and an orphanage.” The women bought a piece of land for N40,000 and went on to buy building materials of N160,000 to make the foundation of the Daddu Town Hall. The community was mobilized to construct the building and raised a further N500,000 at its official launch.

 

“This singular dedication of the women to these projects is the genesis of the new edifice in Daddu: a Town Hall that is the pride of the entire district.”

Hafirs  in Lashaine Village Allow Gardens to Flurish!

Local Tanzanian parter, Global Service Corps has been implementing the food security component of PFD's Jatropha Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative program (JANI) in Tanzania. On a recent trip to  Monduli,  Global Service Corps volunteers, local Tanzanian interns and staff introduced Hafir-making to Lashaine village.  

Hafirs are large trenches dug into the earth, which collect water that can be used during the dry season to ensure food security. On their latest visit the GSC team approached a widow, Seutai Nanga, who lives near the cattle dip where GSC was waiting for farmers to gather for a village meeting. Seutai was very interested in utilizing a Hafir on her farm but did not know if her father-in-law would accept this new technology. Because he was not around and she was hopeful not to lose the opportunity to try something new, she showed us where it would be possible, near her home and close to where she wanted to start a small garden protected from animals.

GSC began to dig a trench 1 - 1.5 meter wide, tapered to be wider at the top, and 4.75 meters long, enough to create a 6,000 litre water tank. The soil was rock hard, making digging much harder than expected, and the team nearly gave up. In fact, some foreign volunteers from an American engineering university group who helped a couple of hours on the first day, left discouraged and did not return the next day.

However, the small GSC-TZ team persevered and by the 2nd day finished digging the trench, lining it with a plastic sheet, digging shallow ditches to channel water into the trench, and creating a settling pit to collect silt and thus reduce sediment from entering the hafir. Before the work was finished, Seutai's father-in-law came by, furious that the trench had been dug without his prior approval.

GSC-TZ apologized, and agreed to go elsewhere, to the protest of Seutai. Her father-in-law slowly relented. By the time we had finished the construction, several villagers had come by and began asking us to assist them to build hafirs at their homes, and indeed Seutai's father-in-law was one of the most adamant that the next hafir should be at his own homestead!

The following week, GSC-TZ's sustainable agriculture trainers and volunteers taught Seutai how to build sack gardens. Two were constructed at her homestead, and she also made a small deep-dug bed garden wherein she planted both indigenous greens, amaranth and edible nightshade, and other vegetables.

Recently GSC-TZ staff visited Seutai, to discover that not only have recent rains filled her hafir, but her family has benefited from having a water source nearby to keep the gardens producing greens.

Her children have consumed the fresh vegetables, and they have even sold some to provide needed income for her family.

 

A Micro-Credit Success

Ladi Ahmandu is a successful businesswoman and prominent leader in her rural Nigerian community.

As recently as 2005, she never imagined those titles would describe her. As is often the case in rural Nigeria, Ladi was responsible for providing for her eight children. She was responsible for paying their school fees and making sure they recieved proper nutrition and medicine, yet her business of selling cooked rice and beans, boiled yams and potatoes from her home wasn’t providing her with enough money to care for her family.

Ladi learned about the Fantsaum Foundation from a friend, and she then formed a group of ten women to enroll in Fantsaum's micro credit program. With the help of her original 5,000 naira loan (about $34) she was able to expand her food vending business, purchase a store, and begin dreaming of a new future in which she runs a successful restaurant. As her profits increased, her husband proudly encouraged her to continue with business expansion.                                                                                                                                       

The Fantsaum loan program provided Ladi with capital and business training to improve her sales. She learned simple business techniques such as customer care, including keeping the surrounding area clean- simple changes Ladi had never thought of before.

Each afternoon, crowds of local people now sit outside enjoying Ladi’s cooking.

 

The business training provided by Fantsaum introduced saving and business planning techniques. As the leader of her loan group, Ladi shares this information with the other women and ensures that each woman repays their part of the loan.

 

 

ladi's happy customers during lunch in Kafanchan, Nigeria