Healthy Homes Project

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-527-021

In the past year i have been working with mothers in my community and in the annex above me in a healthy homes project. Basically what a healthy homes project is is a project to promote better nutrition, hygine, disease prevention, early childhood stimulation and self-esteem in the household. I am working with mothers from two communities- one San Antonio de Cusicanca which is the community i call home and another annex Tambo de San Antonio de Cusicancha.

The project is designed with 6 meeting that each mother has to attend and accompaning house visits. During the meetings we talk about how to prevent childhood diseases such as the flu, parasites and diarrea. Ironically when I was giving the parasite charla I my self was trying to not poop in my pants from a parasite. The charlas include powerpoints and dinamicas (or acivities), usually with my nurse coordinating the informative part and me coordinating the activities for non- formal education. During the house visits each month the mothers have to demostrate what they have learned from the charla and implement small changes in their household. Often during the house visits the mothers realize that they actually know more than they thought and become aggressively excited when they can answer a question correctly. At the finish of the project the mothers who have completed the project with recieve an improved cook stove, which will help to improve their quality of life and their children by reducing smoke in the kitchen, reducing risk of respiratory infections and reduce the amount of wood needed to cook. Here in the mountians of Peru it is customary to carry a young child on your back nearly 75% of the time and as a result the young children are exposed to the same smoke as their mothers reaking havoc on their lungs.

The mothers that I have been working with in my site are great and their support is one of the reasons I found the inspiration to stay in my site when things seemed difficult. They are very receptive to nearly everything I say- although I´m pretty sure in the first few months they had not a clue what I was saying. But their kindness and willingness ot work with me thorugh some fumbling and a lot of help from the nurse in my health post helped to make the project seem to be a reality. Everytime I got scared that I made an irrevocbale mistake they helped to guide me in the right direction and get back on track. I truly believe that I have learned more from them than they will ever learn from me.

The mothers of my annex are also incredibly supportive women. The annex of Tambo de San Antonio de Cusicancha has the highest rate of malnutrition and young mother pregenancies of all the annexes that my health post are in charge of. It is an annex that at times can seem like its at the end of the earth. Well really only the last 45 min of the 2.5 hour hike up there where it feels like you must be walking into the sky. Many of the mothers have had obstacles that I could never imagine such as: graduating primary school still unable to read, social unrest, and a struggle to access protien. Although there are some steep obstacles such there is a desire to change and a pull from the community leaders that is non-existant in some other communities. For instance, when I held a meeting and some of the mothers missed the meeting the community president scrutiznized my attendance list and said he was going to put the falting mothers under "observation" because they should be taking advantage of every opportunity to improve hte livelihood of their children. This community clearly knows that they have the strength within themselves to improve the life for the next generation.

Together with the mothers in Cusicancha we worked on a project plan and grant application to get funding from the outside for the improved cookstoves. Although I would have loved to get the money from within my municipality they are less than organized so the president of my goup of mothers recommended against it and the community knows better than I do. Currently we are in the process of raising money for the project and anything you can donate would be much appreciated and go to a very good cause!

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-527-021