Description

Healthier communities. Community health workers are trained to provide health information and promote good health practices in their communities. This could include teaching families how to avoid preventable illnesses, performing basic health checks and dispensing medicines.

How your gift helps

It's an exciting day for Virginia (pictured, left), a primary school teacher from Zimbabwe who is graduating from her training - she has completed a course to be a community health worker. Here, she is reading a Women's Health Manual with one of the women from her community who she will now train.

Virginia is part of Family Impact's Women's Health Program, which has been working in rural communities outside Bulawayo in the south-west of Zimbabwe since 2011. Meeting once a month over the past three years, the group of women that Virginia has been a part of has learnt about a range of topics including reproduction, women's health, hygiene and sanitation, sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV and AIDS), cancers and domestic and gender-based violence. They have also been trained in how to teach this information to other women.

Each woman will now find five women in her community who she can meet with monthly and train in the topics in the Women‰۪s Health Manual. Family Impact will continue to provide support, helping them develop their training skills and monitoring the dissemination of knowledge.

On their graduation day, the women sing as a group, celebrating what they have learnt and achieved. For many, this is the first time they have graduated from anything and the first time they have received a certificate with their name on it. Amongst speeches from councillors, health clinic staff and Family Impact staff, there are testimonies from the women of what they have learnt and how it has improved their health and family relationships. Each woman received a hat, t-shirt, certificate and a copy of the Women's Health Manual and laminated pictures of male and female reproductive organs to help them as they train others in the coming years.

Not only have these women learnt information that will save lives and improve health, but they have been empowered to believe they have something to offer others and they can't wait to start!

Your gift of training community health workers is contributing to projects like this one and making a difference in the lives of those facing poverty and marginalisation.

About our partner

A Christian organisation, Family Impact partners with schools and other organisations to build families and transform communities. It educates adults and children on issues like hygiene, sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, and also runs programs that promote peace-building and stronger families and relationships.