In Progress
Hearth and Men As Partners.
The Hearth Nutrition program was so successful that I want to do it again. This time I am expanding it so that the program will reach 5 surrounding communities. There will be two things that change for this program- the first is that the community will have a bigger closing ceremony. Big ceremonies allow the project to reach more people. This year the program will have a corresponding part for men, where issues about how to be more supportive of the health of their wives and children will be discussed.
3rd Annual Girl’s Leadership Camp
Zak, Connor, Emily, Julie and I are in the midst of planning for the 3rd annual Girl’s Leadership Camp. The camp trains girls about leadership, assertiveness, HIV prevention, nutrition, and several other important topics. For more information, see the 2nd Annual Girl’s Leadership Camp below.
Secondary Income Moringa Soap Making
I’m hoping to use the information I got at a soap making workshop I attended to launch a secondary income project for a small group in my village. The participants have made a business plan that includes each person’s responsibility, how much each participant contributed for the initial ingredients, and how the profits will be split. Ideally, this project will also let me touch on the importance of using soap when you wash your hands and also the nutritional benefits of moringa, but it is primarily an income generating project.
Completed
Ghana Longboat HIV Educational Expedition (GLEE)
People living along the water are potentially at higher risk for HIV than other groups of people because they are more mobile than other people. This is particularly true of fishermen. While the populations are mobile via boat, roads into the villages are poor and therefore the villages tend to be harder for public health outreach to get to. In order to address this, Liz, Lizzy, Julie, Beth and myself arranged a mobile HIV education and “Know Your Status” campaign. Know Your Status refers to getting tested for HIV. We stopped in 11 villages and did series of HIV education including games, teaching how HIV is transmitted, and condom demonstrations. People in each village also had the opportunity to get tested for HIV. Over 600 people took advantage of the testing, over 30 community health volunteers were trained in HIV education techniques, and over 450 people attended the trainings.
Global Hand Washing Day Initiative
Hand washing with soap is one of the easiest, least expensive ways to prevent diarrheal and respiratory disease. People here wash their hands frequently, but they don’t necessarily recognize the importance of using soap. To help remedy this, we celebrated Global Hand Washing Day on October 15. We displayed posters, invited chiefs, and performed a drama to demonstrate the importance of hand washing. Over 200 adults attended the program. Additionally, teachers in the primary school collaborated to teach students hand washing lessons in the week leading up to Global Hand Washing Day. These lessons reached over 500 children. We also did a text message campaign, where we sent sms messages to 1,500 people discussing the importance of using soap when washing hands. Both the primary and the JHS schools were given hand washing stations as part of the program, and the schools and the PTA agreed to work together to keep the stations supplied with soap.
2nd Annual Girl’s Leadership Camp
I was invited to be a part of the second annual Girl’s Leadership Camp for girls in the JHS (middle school) in my district. There were a total of 44 girls who came from all over the district. It was fun, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.
The camp was a big deal for the girls. I know because several of them walked over three hours to get there. We only selected three or four girls from each school.
The event was planned by Andy, Ana, Julie, myself and the women at Ghana education services- Madame Marta, Nepheesa, Rahi, and Felicia. The women from Ghana Education Services facilitated most of the sessions. Five girls from the district senior high school were chosen to serve as camp leaders, and they did an excellent job.
Sessions included hygiene, introduction to leadership and assertiveness, goal setting, nutrition, teamwork, and more. We also held a career fair, where successful women from around the community were invited to speak to the girls about how they became successful. The best part of camp was watching how the girls went from being shy to everyone raising their hands and projecting their voices. The second best part was, of course, the smores.
World Map/ HIV Murals
Some students in the primary school, Mr. Baba, and I worked together to paint a map of the world on the primary school building. The map includes statistics about HIV around the world. The map is part of a series of lessons about how HIV is transmitted and why stigmatizing people living with AIDS is not a good thing to do. 150 children were given lessons about HIV transmission and stigmatization, and students were able to answer basic follow-up questions that were designed to test how much of the lessons they retained. In addition to raising awareness about HIV, the map increased knowledge about geography.
Healthy Bodies, Healthy Communities Earth Day Fun Run
To celebrate Earth Day April 22nd, we held a fun run and community clean up. There was a community announcement that everyone should clean around their compounds and burn the trash. Then everyone met up on the football field where there was some information about why it’s important to keep the community clean (looks nicer, cuts down on mosquitoes, protects livestock, etc.) Then there was a race. About 50 people participated in the race and lessons. It’s hard to specify how many people participated in the community clean up, but the community was noticeably cleaner. The winner in each age division received a moringa tree seedling. I am indebted to Beth and Lizzie for this idea.
Hearth
Hearth is a nutrition program developed by a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea named Amanda Palmer. The basis of the program is that some parents have healthy, well-nourished children even if the parents are poor. These parents are known as positive deviants. The program focuses on what these people in the community are doing right. A positive deviant mother is chosen to be the leader, and she is provided with some extra training about hygiene and basic nutrition. Hygiene is important because a child will not gain weight if parasites are taking all the nutrients from his or her food. Over a space of two weeks, this positive deviant mother meets with approximately ten other mothers in the community to make a nutritionally balanced recipe to feed to the children and teach them her best practices for caring for the children. Typically, children begin to gain weight during the program and the mothers pass the information throughout the community. An existing Mother-to-Mother Support Group in my community trained our positive deviant mother. We met 8 times, preparing a different porridge every morning. We talked about which foods should be added to the porridge to make it nutritionally balanced. By the end of the program, they were able to identify which ingredients would make porridge nutritious. They were also demonstrating the things we discussed- the women started washing their hands every day before preparing the food, and making sure the food was covered at all times. One woman’s husband approached me to tell me that his wife was enjoying the program, and that their child particularly liked one of the recipes. At the end of the program the women were able to answer questions about basic nutrition and hygiene. I want to do it again in nearby communities. The project is important because malnutrition rates in my district are about 42%. Throughout Ghana, malnutrition rates are only about 22%.
Kayayo Film
Pete and Alicia, two people who used to volunteer in my district, put together a film and a photo slideshow about kayayo and toured around the northern region to show people their work. Kayayo is the word used for people who go to the big cities (Accra or Kumasi) and work as porters. Going to kayayo puts young people at huge risk because they are not supervised by their parents. They live in big slums which are prone to burning down and killing the people inside due to bad wiring and overcrowding. People who go to kayayo are at a higher risk for contracting HIV. The draw is that working kayayo is an opportunity to make money- an opportunity that doesn’t exist during the dry season in the villages. The film depicted two people who went to do kayayo and the consequences for them. Around 400 people attended the film in my village. I invited a young woman who has done kayayo to come and lead a discussion the next day, which was also well attended. I gave a condom demonstration. Giving a condom demonstration for 100 people in a foreign language was an interesting experience. We invited some nurses to come and provide free HIV testing. 26 people in my village got tested. The nurses also did an educational talk about HIV as part of the project.
Ongoing
JHS class
Every week I teach a health class for the form 2 students in JHS (middle school). We have talked about germ theory, malaria prevention, hand washing with soap, basic hygiene, and the components of the immune system.
Mobile HIV Messages
As part of the JHS class, I have students illustrate the health messages they are learning on portable chalk boards, which are then placed in strategic places throughout the community. The idea is to get people talking about the health messages. The big advantage is that the white boards are re-usable, so the message can change to stay interesting and relevant. The first message was about the importance of hand washing with soap.
Personal Garden
I’m starting my own garden and trying to incorporate all the soil-saving stuff that the environment volunteers are pushing, like living fences and alley cropping. It will also have moringa trees. Moringa is heavy in protein and vitamin A, both things most people don’t get enough of here. I plan on pushing moringa in future projects as well.
World Wise Schools
One of the big goals of Peace Corps is cultural exchange. To help facilitate that, I’m writing letters about Ghana to a fifth grade class in Sheridan, Wyoming through the World Wise Schools program. I try to write twice a month.
Blog
This blog also promotes cultural exchange. I try to update it at least once a month. Please feel free to send me any questions you have about Ghana and I will do my best to answer your questions.
Committees
Food Security
There is a big focus in Peace Corps right now on food security. Another volunteer, Casimir, initiated the idea of starting a food security committee to help support efforts in this area, and I am one of the representatives. Our ideas right now include creating an index of food security related projects, creating nutrition teaching tools, creating a manual for establishing school garden programs, and making a seed bank for volunteers to use.
Miscellaneous
National Immunization Days- community volunteers go and administer polio vaccinations to all the young children in the village. I like to tag along with our community volunteers. Sometimes I help by marking the children who have received the vaccination with a special marker. My presence makes the whole situation more traumatic for the kids, who scream about the nasty tasting vaccine and then scream again when the scary white lady grabs their hand and starts coloring on it.
Mosquito Net Distribution- several NGO’s recently teamed up to provide mosquito nets for pregnant women and children under five years of age. I tagged along with the volunteers and helped hang about 150 mosquito nets in the village.
Random- For other events, I help carry benches or with other set-up related tasks. Some times I pitch in on baby weighing day. I still spend a lot of time cracking peanuts and trying to learn Dagboni.
