Fund Life Saving Maternal Care for Women in DRC

Hello to our dedicated and generous Hope for Our Sisters GlobalGiving Community! We hope this finds you and yours well.

Thank you so very much for investing in our sisters and hope-generating programs! We have an exciting update for you. First of all, the Wellness Clinic continues to be a safe haven for women needing cesarean deliveries. (Let's all remember, that this surgery must also be timely and safe, or our sisters suffer awful injuries, such as fistula.) For the months from December 2022 through February 2023, you helped to fund 166 cesarean deliveries out of 529 deliveries! 

Second, we have an update for you directly from Chantal Dz'da Mandro, Wellness Clinic Manager, herself! Even though, through this GlobalGiving project, you help fund the Maternal Health Fund (free/discounted timely and safe cesarean deliveries), we wanted you to understand the bigger picture of the Wellness Clinic. (We at HFOS also fund the Micro Finance portion of the Women's Empowerment Program.) One thing we love about Chantal is the data-based approach she and her team take to their community care. That will be evident when you read the below.

ACTIVITY PROGRESS REPORT FOR JERICHO ROAD MUGUNGA CENTER GOMA

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO.

PROGRAMS: NUTRITION, WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AND EDUCATION

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Jericho Road Community Health Center is working in improving life by providing opportunities for the marginalized to be healthy, educated, and whole, in order to demonstrate the unconditional love of Jesus. Since 2016 JRCHC opened up the medical program to help marginalized people in the Republic Democratic of Congo in particular in the eastern part of the country North Kivu in GOMA, where there are several displaced people due to the multiplicity of wars and conflicts. Jericho Road’s Wellness Clinic opened its doors in order to provide essential primary medical care to the most vulnerable individuals within the surrounding communities, who previously had no access to healthcare. 

After the Opening of the Clinic, we realized that there were other needs in the community; children could get medical care but most of them were suffering from malnutrition which led us to open a nutrition center in Mugunga. In treating malnourished children, we started having relapse cases therefore we did a research in the community to find a way of completely treating children and reducing cases of relapse. 

We made a research that proved that most of the children were orphans, daughters and sons of widows. After this depth study we came to realise that the parents especially women had really low income or no income source at all. Most of these families get food once a day and can go for days without eating and sleeping with no hopes of when they will. These studies led us to open up the Women Empowering Program to help those women become autonomous and improve their children lives. The WEP has several activities such as the Microfinance, the Agro pastoral, the trade training programs which include the plastic weaving of bags and sewing courses to help women to create their own Income generating activities. 

The studies also showed that most of these children have no access to education and when they grow up they are exposed to every type of stress, violence, early pregnancies, economic problems and many others. Therefore, we started the educational program by opening a primary school recovery to help these children have a brighter future and have access to more opportunities in life. 

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

North Kivu has been filled with warfare terror and insecurity for the late couple of years but for the late past months the situation has been worse. Goma city has been unstable and affected by the insecurity due to several days off occurring because of strikes caused by the population claiming to the Government that the MONUSCO should leave the country but also insecurity concerns due to the ongoing conflict in between the M23 rebels and the Congolese army FARDC.  The population is living under stress and uncertainty of how tomorrow is going to be, the cost of living has considerably increased as well because most of products such as food and others come from Rutshuru and Masisi and both are occupied by the rebels.

ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS

THE NUTRITIONAL CENTER 

The nutritional center is ongoing since 2018 and has been helping thousands of children come out malnutrition. We normally have 3 sessions per week. In every session the nutritionist gives nutritional education to women to help them have a better diet plan and help the children avoid the relapse. After that we cook and distribute porridge flour that has been specially made to finish malnutrition and boiled eggs from the JRCHC mugunga center farm then we distribute 2kg of flour to women for them to feed their chidren at home.  In every session we get 50 to 70 women. Every week we have approximatively 200 children.  

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM

- VILLAGE SAVING AND LOAN ASSOCIATION 

The VSLA that started in 2022 is still ongoing and will end after a period of nine months or one year depending with the group’s choices. We currently have 70 women divided into 2 groups of 35 people each. The progress is encouraging due to different testimonies of women who are becoming more responsible, they have the ability to save money and also, they can take loans that can help them in their families and small businesses. Another important aspect is that they have become close to each other and visit each other whenever someone in the group is having issues or has been hospitalized, they always come together to help and visit that person.

- MICRO FINANCE (Funded by HFOS, not this GG Project)

In order to help women empowerment and contribute to their economic growth and reduce cases of malnutrition in their households we have distributed money to different groups of women who are dynamic and able to run a small business. We currently have 61 women divided into 5 groups depending on the number of credits they take. The group names are Ushirika (Communion), Maendeleo (Development), Tuungane (Let’s unite), Umoja ni Nguvu (Unity is strength), and Tujenge (Let’s build together).

To make sure that the micro finance is effective we keep doing monitoring and evaluation activities after every 6 weeks by visiting families and small businesses of those women. Currently we have visited 39 women and out of those 27 are doing well and they have increased their business capital. 

• MICROFINANCE SUCCESS STORIES 

1. Riziki: Is a 38years old married woman who has been receiving credit for 2 years. When she started her small business of selling fresh juices, she had a capital of 30$ and the first credit she got was 50$. She kept increasing her credit level and opened new activities like breeding of chicken hybrid and goat. The second credit she got of 180$ that helped her develop further, she was also given a rabbit from the breeding program which helped her develop even more, she now has a capital of 2440$. She is very happy of the opportunity JRCHC is giving her and stated that this program has changed her life and that’s the reason why she is able to take care of her family. She also said that before this she used to take credit loan to repay daily but with this micro finance program she gets to pay once a week and that’s a huge difference because before she used to live with stress which is all gone now.  
2. Nikuze: Is a 44years old married woman with 8 children. Her daughter had 3 children and left them at their grandparent’s house. All 3 children came with malnutrition, in order to provide for them and help them she brought them to Jericho Road Mugunga center. She used to be a baggage handler for vegetables in mugunga market working for someone else, when she joined the program, she had 25$ and she was helped with 75$ and opened her own business. She decided to open up a small shop of condiments and fresh juices, now she has increased her capital up to 360$. She now has her own business and she is working with her husband and children who help her at the shop. She is very happy and hopes that the program will continue to help her and her whole family. She is very thankful to JRCHC for including her in the WEP because she can now run her own business and she can also save some money. 
3. Bora:  Is a 37years old married woman with 9 children. She used to sell fruits with a capital of 20$ before being part of the program, when she joined the program, she was given 50$ for microfinance and after few months she now has a capital of 150$. Before this they used to sleep on the couch but now she has bought house furniture including beds for herself and children. Out of her 9 children only 5 used to go to public school and the others used to just stay at home, now all her other 4 children have joined Jericho road school and have access to education.  She is very thankful to JRCHC for helping her increase her capital and helping her children get free access to education. she wishes to continue her business and believes that she will become autonomous. 

- AGROPASTORAL PROGRAM

We have the agricultal program in order to help women with food provision and help their children not go back to malnutrition state. The agricultural activities are ongoing and we distribute seeds and vegetables to women every month. For this past month we have distributed 2032 seeds of different vegetables such as cabbage, spinach, aubergine and other vegetables to 75 families. We usually visit those families in order to assist them with all their concerns and make sure that this is helping their families.  Most of them have their own small vegetable fields. We hope that this will help these families and malnutrition will become an old story to them. 

In our WEP we started the breeding program to boost and maintain income of women and help them reduce malnutrition in their homes.  We distribute animals to women who can work as breeders and actually have their own activities. We have different species that we give to women such as pork, rabbit. We have distributed 16 piggies so far and for this month we have distributed 6 others to 6 women after visiting their houses. We usually visit the families in order to help them in breeding and make sure that the income they get from it will help their children and their whole family.

- TRADE TRAINING PROGRAM 

The trade training activities are ongoing, we have the plastic weaving of bags that currently has 9 students and the sewing courses that has 13. We have distributed 3 sewing machines to women who completed their courses and who are now able to open up their own sewing activities. This gives courage that the courses are helpful. The women are thankful to JRCHC for giving them an opportunity to learn on how to be autonomous, their families are supportive and all of them are grateful for the progress these women have made in their lives. We are continuing the program with new students and we hope that after they complete their courses, we will be able to give them sewing machines like the old students in order to help them start up their business activities.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

The primary school recovery is encouraging, children are motivated and thankful to the program that allows them to have access to free education. We currently have 3 levels to complete the primary school recovery plan; from level 1 it’s children from 9 to 11years old, level 2 from 12years to 14years old, level 3 from 14years to 16years old. In the beginning we had overwhelming demands of parent who were coming with their children and sadly who left unhappy to find out that the number of students required were already reached. The school plan is experiencing a delay in the annual calendar due to several days off occurring because of strikes caused by the population.  The teachers are working on the chronogram to fit the annual calendar despite the delay and complete the program on time.   We keep having training and workshops every Friday with the teachers to come together and talk about their challenges and give them orientations. The on their side keep having evaluation of students after two chapters to evaluate their progress in the learning process and give orientations. 

CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED 

CHALLENGES 

Most of the challenges we are experiencing are based on the chronogram delays due to several strikes and insecurity concerns. We have also realized through different monitoring and evaluation missions that some of the women have really low capacity in money management and entrepreneurship.

LESSONS LEARNED 

During these past months we have learned that we need to increase training sessions in how to manage small businesses so that when women keep increasing their credit level they can make good usage of that money and with time they can become autonomous and provide better lives for their children. Taking into account that most of the women have a really low knowledge in reading and writing we need to increase the sessions of alphabetisation to help them come out of illiteracy. 

Links:

• HFOS Website