Community health worker volunteer, Yanso Yimchunger

Biratnagar, Nepal community health worker coordinator, Sangeeta, has been busy with her team making community visits and hosting awareness camps to improve health practices for families!

These community events are an important way of disseminating information to the groups that will use it without needing to go door-to-door. Having a local leader means that the camps can be flexible and up-to-date with issues the community may be facing. In Biratnagar, for instance, Sangeeta and her team held camps about maternity care, nutrition, avoiding child marriage, alcohol withdrawal, and personal hygiene. Health camps can be quite large, with a recent Dengue fever camp being attended by over 80 people!

Women and children are often the groups in the highest attendance, and this gives them the important role of sharing what they’ve learned with their family and friends. Empowering women with the knowledge to improve the health and wellbeing of their family and community! 

Pictured: Alex and his mother

In the Luapula province of Zambia, a boy name Alex was struggling with a wound that simply would not heal. His mother brought him to the local hospital for treatments, but this leg wound persisted for months. Thankfully, the hospital they were visiting is the same one our Luapula Kafwa coordinator Jane volunteers at! The doctors recommended that Alex and his mother visit with Jane, as the Kafwa have a very good track record of treating wounds. Sure enough, after counseling the pair on preparing and administering guava leaf antiseptic, followed by antibiotic ointment for the areas of the wound that persisted, Jane reports that Alex is doing much better now! 

Alex’s story is not unique. All of our community health worker colleagues have been trained in wound care, and have built a trusted reputation with the community and local clinics. Some patients may even be referred from the clinics to the health workers when someone is faced with difficult ongoing cases. We are so proud that the health workers’ years of experience and persistence result in knowledge gained and people healed!

Nursing scholar Nikita with a patient

Now that 2023 has begun, the nursing scholars have also started their studies! This year the nursing scholarship fund provided 11 nursing scholarships for new and continuing students from four countries.  

Empowering women and children through health, education, and advocacy is our mission. And providing scholarships for aspiring nurses is one of the many ways we promote development and access to health care in communities. Many of the scholars we support volunteer as community health workers in their spare time, providing home-based care or supporting health awareness camps for their community. Others serve as trainers when our community health worker colleagues gather to learn about current health issues and illness prevention methods in their area. All of our scholars are excited to continue their studies and help their patients and communities be healthy! 

We are thrilled to provide support for bright women and men who look forward to serving their patients and communities with professionalism and passion!

New nursing scholar, Albertina

We’ve wrapped up 2022 in a bow and are excited to share later this month just how much good has been accomplished in the year!

While we reflect on the year, there’s a very important group we’d like to thank - our monthly donors! Twelve times a year, over SIXTY individuals and families make the choice to empower women and children. Their efforts build up over the month, and in 2022 alone, our monthly donors have gifted nearly $70,000 to programs that will protect and uplift communities! From building up libraries a book at a time to building confidence in scholars as they pursue diplomas, we are so grateful for this group that keeps HealthEd Connect’s mission near and dear to their hearts.

To our wonderful monthly donors - we send a big, heartfelt thank you!

We are so grateful for the international community that makes our mission to empower women and children possible! From our board members and coordinators who provide direction, to our supporters who provide the tools that build change, to our school and community health worker colleagues who pave the road to brighter futures, this team changes lives in big ways!

Orphans and vulnerable children have access to education and nutrition, families can gather and be uplifted at community centers, and women can protect their children through weighings and practices taught by community health workers. We send love and thanks to each of you for investing in advocacy, health education, and learning opportunities that will raise up communities and future generations!

Happy girls at the community center

In the Kikungu village of D.R. Congo, there’s great excitement! After a generous gift of land from the chiefs, the Wasaidizi health workers and Kikungu community members joined together to build a community center to serve the children and mothers of the area.

After an traditional groundbreaking ceremony, the group encountered their first major obstacle: the truck hired to transport bricks to the site could not pass over the dike due to heavy rains. Seeing that this could mean significant delays in construction, women in the community volunteered to carry the heavy blocks! One woman would bend down while others would stack the blocks on her head, and then walk nearly a mile to the site where volunteers would help to unload them before doing it over again.

Thanks to their hard work, the community center walls went up in a matter of days, and now the roof is being framed while the floors are prepared and the outside of the center is receiving its first plaster coating. All of this has been accomplished in just a few short months!

One of the project coordinators, Musans, wrote: “The Kikungu center is an event of the century…[The community says] a miracle is done in Kikungu… to show their joy, everyone who visits the works contributes with his strength…the children, young people and parents.”

Community centers like these are only possible thanks to teamwork from coordinators, community members, and supporters like you! To see an abbreviated version of how this project has progressed on-site, watch our Youtube video here. You'll be amazed! 

Kasompe students patiently waiting for their meals

It’s an exciting time for our sister schools in Zambia as they celebrate a successful school year completed! Early in the morning, the Kafwa and school cooks join together to cook a very special meal for the students. Nshima, rice, meats like sausage or chicken, veggies, and special sweets are all on the menu, and take several hours to prepare.

The excitement, gratitude, and joy on the student’s faces make the hard work worth it! The children are very happy, and can take the leftover food home to their families to enjoy. We are so proud to support the teachers, school boards, and kafwa that make each school day an opportunity to educate and nurture.

Special days like these are made possible by you, friends! Thank you for blessing others generously, and uplifting health care, education, and advocacy for orphans and vulnerable children at our sister schools!

Students happily saying “End of year party”!

Thresah, Kafwa community health worker, excited about the latrine development in Mulundu, Zambia

How often are we grateful for our toilets? If you have one, it may be easy to overlook how important it is to your daily life. However, 3.6 billion (yes, with a "b") people do not have access to safely managed sanitation.* Without safely managed sanitation, our health, environment, and dignity all come into jeopardy. Time and hard work are of the essence if we want to protect each other and meet goals to have toilets for all by 2030.* (*World Toilet Day)

HealthEd Connect includes sanitation education in community health worker training, and we're grateful to support and partner in efforts to provide access to safe sanitation systems in communities. In the rural area of Gorkha, Nepal, Ramprasad has built 31 latrines with the help of the families who will benefit from them. Their new access to safe sanitation facilities is cause for community celebration! At our partner school in Kasompe, Zambia, the new ablution (toilet) block is completely finished and in use thanks to a Rotary grant focused on WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) in schools. And in Mulundu, Zambia, a latrine is being built next to their new community center. The community, and the environment, is healthier because of these sanitation facilities.

So, today we celebrate toilets! Moreover, we advocate for the importance of effective sanitation education and systems to maintain good community health.