A community health service programme in Yuci and Taiyuan to provide clinical care for patients, conduct community assessments and diagnosis, training of community health workers, develop and provide health education to migrant workers and pre-school students through SES
Farza was once a fertile piece of land in Kabul of Afghanistan and was especially famous with its grape vineyards. But it has been for the past few years the frontier of conflicts between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. When the Taliban retreated, people began returning to their villages. The place has been converted into a devastated state by reason of the war. It lacks health and sanitation facilities. It was reported that about 45% of the children there can go to schools, but actually the figure may be lower. People’s living there is difficult by reason of unemployment, lack of arable land, illiteracy, poor health, gender inequalities and vulnerability to disasters.
CEDAR has been supporting our partner in Afghanistan in its services for over 1300 villagers in Farza since 2007. A group based approach is applied in building up relationship of mutual trust, love and aid among the villager members. Each of the 44 self-help groups receives some basic health and literacy education and skills training of different kinds every week.
Agricultural trainings bring solution to villagers’ problem on unbalanced diet. In the project, new farming techniques on fruit tree farming and kitchen gardening are introduced bringing improvement to villagers’ health as well as the environment. A number of livelihood trainings including animal husbandry, fish farming, tailoring and carpet making are also provided. The project also consists of micro-credit loans to assist those unemployed villagers in setting up their own small businesses. Some would do animal and poultry husbandry and sell the fresh eggs and milk in the local bazaar at reasonable price. Meanwhile, women groups will receive education on basic health care bringing improvements to their physical health. The project also encourages mutual aid funds among group members for community developments. Eight of the groups have started money saving plans for installation of water blocks so as to protect their field from flooding.
WHO defines “adolescent” as those aged between 10 and 19. Adolescents are not children but not yet considered to be adult. As a result, they are easily being neglected. During adolescence period, both boys and girls experience physical, psychological and social characteristics changes. They have to prepare themselves for being leaders of future. It is therefore important to provide them knowledge and values on rights and justice issues as well as civil responsibilities.
Nevertheless, many adolescents in Bangladesh do not have schooling opportunities due to poverty. They are illiterate, usually jobless and being ignored most of the time. They, especially girls, know little about their rights and are thus vulnerable. The poor families tend to marry off their daughters as young as 13-14 years old in order to save family expenditure and dowry price. However, it is very difficult for these adolescence girls who are not mature yet to adapt to new lives staying with a new family. Moreover, early marriage and early pregnancy can be very harmful to their lives.
To tackle with this problem, CEDAR supports PARI Development Trust to implement Adolescence Empowerment and Education Project in rural areas of Central Bangladesh. Partner talked about different issues like civil and family responsibilities, relations between two sexes, personal hygiene, psychological health, women rights and marriage issues through games, group discussions and role play to help the adolescence build up rights and justice values. Also, partner train them in vocational skills and build up their capacity for generating income. Meanwhile, seminars are organized for parents, community leaders and religious leaders to let them understand needs of adolescents and encourage them to communicate positively with the adolescents. This project emphasizes girls’ rights and disseminates the bad effect of early marriage in a hope to join hands with parents and community leaders to stop early marriage and early pregnancy to protect the girls.
Rashida was only 15 years old but her father planned to marry her off to a 22-year-old man. Rashida and her mother were told about the bad effect and restrictions of law against early marriage. They seek advice of the local government officials with the help of project staff and finally persuaded her father not to marry her off.
