It’s a challenge shared by all developing countries and Kenya is no exception.  In Nyanza province, where Tiba works, girls drop out of school at an alarming rate.  Some get pregnant, others experience the death of their parents and the resulting need to take care of siblings.  Marrying early, working to support their family, the ubiquitous HIV crisis, and generally poor health are other significant reasons.

All of this poverty and poor health causes so many girls to drop out, creating still more poverty and even more ill health.  It’s a vicious cycle, and hard to break.

As girleffect.com articulates so well in their video, a girl who lives in poverty comes to a crossroads when she reaches adolescence.  If she is lucky she gets an opportunity to study, stays healthy, and remains HIV negative.  She marries when she chooses and she raises a healthy family.  If she is not educated, chances are that she will be illiterate, married off, isolated, pregnant and vulnerable to HIV.  Her children will share her poverty, and the cycle will continue.

It’s true that when you educate a girl…everything changes.

Lifunga Girls Secondary School

Together with our local partner, the Matibabu Foundation, Tiba is aiming to break the cycle of poverty and poor health for young women in Siaya, Kenya.  We are happy to announce our latest investment – school medical services for the students at Lifunga Girls Secondary School.  The services includes health education, health services and a basic needs program covering sanitary pads, school uniforms and shoes for the girls.

Healthy and educated women are key to a productive and prosperous community.  That’s why investing in girls is not merely the right thing to do.  It’s also the smart thing to do.

Stay tuned for more news about Tiba’s investment in the Lifunga Girls Secondary School.

Lisa doing the work she loves, Kenya, 2012.

Kaiser Permanente Ob/Gyn Lisa Ryujin recently completed her second Tiba volunteer trip.  She returned to work with our partner Matibabu Foundation in Siaya County because of moments like this: a patient was brought in with an acute abdomen, near death from sepsis. In the operating room Lisa’s team discovered a ruptured appendicitis and was able to repair it.  In the following days Dr. Ryujin watched her patient “get progressively better, and even…go home.  It felt like I was able to witness a miracle.”

This patient would almost certainly have died had Tiba’s volunteer team not been in Kenya that day.  Lisa is amazed by how much her Kenyan colleagues, working with such limited resources, are able to achieve for their patients.  But there simply are not enough doctors in rural Africa to address the tremendous need.

It’s easy to take things for granted at a wonderful organization like Kaiser, with world class resources.  Working in rural Kenya, in contrast, “pushes a physician to be creative, and it is also a ‘return to the basics’ of physical exam, the heart of medicine.”

“I came to medicine with the hope that I could help communities ….to grow and prosper in all areas of the world,” Lisa told us recently.  When she first came to Africa she was stunned by the vastness of the need. She wished she could do more.  But Lisa Ryujin has come to believe that “it is better to strive for change within your capacity, than to give way to hopelessness. Working with Matibabu, I feel like I’m part of the solution.”

Learn more
See Dr. Ryujin’s profile at Kaiser Permanente. If you are interested in learning more about Lisa’s experiences in Kenya, please read the blog posts she recently wrote for Kaiser Permanente’s Global Health Blog.

Matibabu’s offices are cut into converted sea-going containers.  These wonderful innovations appear all over the developing world because they’re cheap, waterproof, and easy to transport to remote rural locations, like this one.  They do, however, come with one disadvantage.  Fred Okango had to yell over tremendous noise of equatorial rain pounding on the steel roof.

Dr. Fred Okanga in the new hospital.

“We have an idea for one of your grants.”

For nearly two years, Tiba and Matibabu had been exploring ways to fund the vital Community Health Worker (CHW) program.  A generous donor had provided enough funding to keep all 500 health workers busy for a couple of years, but what happens when the money runs out?  CHW’s are unpaid volunteers.  And all over the world these programs face this sustainability challenge.   If they can’t make a living, they can’t keep delivering their life-saving services.

Mary Akinyi Oundo is a community health worker in Lela Village, Ugenya District, Kenya.

Matibabu’s management team had been studying a new approach:  Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), created at Great Lakes University, 60 kilometers away in Kisumu and successfully implemented in several East African regions.  PLA, with leadership from village health workers, involves the entire community in sourcing local resources to create small enterprises.  The profits from these businesses lift not only families, but sustain the Community Health Worker program.

In short, Matibabu’s leadership team did not want a grant that would buy time for an important program, but seed funding that would provide leadership to create local businesses, local wealth, and local independence.

Matibabu’s grant application for this promising program was approved by our board last month, and efforts are underway in Ugenya District, Kenya now.  If all goes well, Matibabu won’t be be asking for new money to keep the CHW program going in 2013, but reporting on profitable projects that sprang from its own community members.

Mary, Maddie and Mary's brother Richard.

Valerie wrote us back:
My daughter’s friend Maddie learned about Tiba through her school.  She and my daughter Mary, (both in grade 3) had a sleepover the night before and were talking over breakfast about the kids in Kenya and what they needed to stay healthy.  We decided to do something to help, so my husband made a big pot of hot chocolate (it is still cold here in Rochester NY) and the girls made an oatmeal/chocolate/nut cookie recipe that they did themselves.  They set up a table in our front yard, and  Mary convinced her older brother Richard to knock on the doors of our neighborhood with a flyer and a note that said “today only!  Hot chocolate and cookies!  Support change in Kenya”  The response from our neighbors was overwhelming.  We “sold out” and had 41 dollars in 2 hours!

Thank you Mary and Maddie for your inspiring initiative.  You did a wonderful job involving Mary’s brother, her parents and your whole neighborhood in your fundraiser.  We are beyond grateful!

For the first time in the human history of Ugenya District–home to 210,000–about a hundred people with disabilities will have access to mobility equipment.

Frederick, a gentle young man 19, has lived alone in a hut since he was 8 years old. In a few months, he will be mobile.

Tiba is pleased to announce the launch of a new comprehensive rehab equipment program in concert with two local partners in Kenya, the Matibabu Foundation, and the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya. 

This is a year-long pilot project to test a comprehensive program Tiba hopes to fund in 2013.  The project will provide equipment appropriate to each user: wheelchairs, market tricycles, walkers, crutches and canes.  A mobile team of four, including a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, an equipment specialist, and a field officer deeply familiar with the local villages and people, will visit families in their home areas.  There, they will assess needs and then return with the appropriate equipment to assure proper fit and usage.  Local field officers will return to each family during the year to assess the impact the equipment has made.  We hope to serve 100 families during the pilot phase.  After a year, all parties will sit down and look at what worked, what didn’t, and how we can begin to scale up the program.

Locally manufactured wheelchairs ready to be distributed.

At Tiba, we are extremely pleased and excited about the potential for this pilot.  People with disabilities in this region have historically existed in extreme isolation, sometimes living and dying on mat or blanket, in the corner of a hut.  Appropriate mobility equipment will give some of them a chance to work, to go to school, to create productive lives.  And once people with disabilities begin living out in their communities, momentum begins to build around increasing services and access, and a culture begins, ever so slowly, to change.

Our thanks to the primary donors to this effort, Dr. Eric Alexander and his family, and to all of our Kenyan partners who worked so hard to create the plan.  We look forward to reporting on the results of this pilot project, and even more to seeing people with disabilities out and about in Nyanza province!

What to know more about the project?  Click here.

Photo by Stephen K. Hall, MD.

]]> http://tibafoundation.org/blog/2012/04/03/we-all-smile-in-the-same-language/feed/ 1 http://tibafoundation.org/blog/2012/03/21/together-were-changing-the-story/ http://tibafoundation.org/blog/2012/03/21/together-were-changing-the-story/#comments Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:42:10 +0000 Åsa Fahlgren http://tibafoundation.org/blog/?p=1169 This young man nearly died of tuberculosis a year ago. Thanks to our Kenyan partner the Matibabu Foundation and community health worker Thomas Sadimba, he is not only alive but he is healthy and he is looking forward to a brighter future.

Thomas Sadimba (left) with a grateful patient (right)

To learn more about how you can help and about the critical programs Tiba supports to build community health care in rural Kenya click here.

Looking for success in Kenya (part 1)
Despite hardships, a Kenyan thrives (part 2)
Creating wealth through health (preview)

On Sunday March 4th CNN aired the incredible story of Dan Ogola, the co-founder of Tiba’s Kenyan partner, the Matibabu Foundation.

Dan Ogola with his family.

You’ve read about the work we support in East Africa.  Here it is in color, movement, and light.

Don’t miss the incredible story of Dan Ogola on CNN, Sunday, March 4th at 2pm ET.

Tiba invests in health care in rural Kenya because we believe health is key to productivity and prosperity for the people of Siaya. Our work wouldn’t be possible though, without people like Dan and our Kenyan partner, the Matibabu Foundation.

Go to the CNN website.