I've been kind of busy since the last time I posted. This is the season where you can get work done since no one is in the fields right now. I've had several meetings and lots of discussions and still haven't really done anything. Well, that's not entirely true. We created a health and sanitation committee and had our first intrioduction meeting this week. I'm startung a formation (is that english too?) or a training whioch will last 17 meetings. The training is called PHAST (Participatory Health and Sanition transformation) and is supposed to empower people into being responsible for water ans sanitation features in their community and give peopelk teh self-esteem to figure out how diseases are spread, hopefully leading to behavioral changes. It's supported by WHO and it has worked for other volunteers. I hope it goes well. I'm kinnda nervous about it but I know everyone in the group so I feel comfortable.
What else? Well the big project we're working on is building a maternnity clinic in my village. I'll let you know more details and how you can help, but it's a serious health and security issue that we hope to improve. The other project is going to be trainig a team of pumprepairman because there are none in my village and 1 of 3
pumps are broken. That's what I'm working on now. Hopefully small sanitation projects will come out of the PHAST training.
I had a nice birthday. Thanks for the packages aunt judy, mom, dad and gail, and trisha. really nice. I might be traveling to Bamako pretty soon. There's a in-service training april 2-6, I'll keep you posted.
1 comment:
well, what do you know--i just took this 2-weekend workshop on behavior-changing strategy in international public health, and my project designs included changing water sanitation practices and increasing prenatal care for pregnant women who lived far from a clinic. wow. i'm taking a seminar in the fall about international public health, so maybe i can actually [gasp] DO something when i make it to mali. i'm trying to think of a good time to go--jeff thinks we should go to cuba when i graduate in december (we're living together when he comes to monterey in the fall), so that might pose a problem; what's november like down there? maybe thanksgiving? hmm.
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