When I was "forced" to leave CARE in Tanzania in May 2006, I was somehow confused! That was a "Threat" to my survival - for you who know "SWOT". But I turned things differently. On July 1st 2009 ASMET  celebrated her 3rd year supporting and created new "life" for over 450 "Vituo Vya Maendeleo Vya Jamii" - VITOVU (umbilical cord - in Kiswahili). 3/4 of the 450 VITOVU members are women and young people who had lost hope! By July 2009 all were leading assured social and economic lives - many are now supporting 3 to 5 members of their families; including assured 3 meals per day, have sponsored their children to secondry schools and all managing viable small businesses.

How? I applied the CARE Niger MMD community groups methodlogy and CARE Tanzania (HISA or VSL) methodology to create VITOVU groups on pilot basis and now have over 12 VITOVU groups using personal savings, pension funds (32,000/= per month and parttime consultancy jobs. From 2010 we plan to create more VITOVU groups targeting young people in marketing places around Dar es Salaam City. Thanks CARE for empowering me first, I'm no longer confused from loosing my job. I'm now known as "mwalimu -teacher" or "mshauri - advisor" by the community members i work with. Join us to change their lives for the better!  

Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE, reflects on her trip to Kenya.

During the past few days we've learned a lot, visited various sites, dividing into three groups going to communities and through urban areas.

When reflecting on visits to countries like Kenya, I'm always impressed and encouraged by the enthusiasm of the people I've met along the way. In the case of the recent Kenya Learning Tours trip, it gave me great hope to witness health workers, mothers, people with HIV and youth express their commitment to solve health problems and work to overcome extreme poverty. Their names, faces and powerful stories will always be with me to drive my work.

As co-chair of the CSIS Commission on Smart Global Health Policy with Admiral Bill Fallon, we hosted this trip to Kenya to learn and bring back messages to U.S. policy makers on global health solutions. Much can be drawn from Kenya to be applied more broadly as we look to enhance awareness and commitment to health issues around the world. We are seeing improvements but we aren't where we should be. Clearly, there's no quick nor easy fix to get there.

The good news is we know the kinds of things that make health systems work from procurement of medicines to training health workers to good policies that make efforts sustainable. And, as more evidence-based data is collected and analyzed, it will help drive priorities. Moving forward, as we look to solve health problems and increase access to health services, it's important to not solely think about the technical interventions. Donor integration and coordination is also extremely critical. Increased flexibility of investments will be a major driver of success. Ultimately, our goal is to allow governments and communities to use this platform to take on more of an ownership role and make it sustainable. The bottom line is that we need to get this strategy right and efforts should not be about political advantage but rather on the health and well-being of the people, like the one's I've met in Kenya and in so many other developing countries I've visited over the years.

A woman in Siaya District (Nyanza Province), Kenya. (2009 Allen Clinton/CARE)

Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE, blogs from her trip to Kenya.

August 10, 2008

Well, we arrived last night to Nairobi around 9 p.m. and settled in. Most of the Learning Tours group ended up on the same flight to Nairobi from Amsterdam, which was great as it gave us a bit of time to connect with each other and get focused on the Learning Tour trip.

This morning after a breakfast briefing we loaded up in a van and headed to a drop off point to get to Kibera Tabitha Clinic. Kibera is a densely populated "informal settlement" or slum area of Nairobi. Population estimates for Kibera are as high as 1 million people. It's probably the largest and most studied slum in Africa – nearly the size of Manhattan's Central Park. From our drop off point at the top of a hill, it looks like a corrugated sea of rusted tin roofs and open sewers.

Reaching the clinic involves walking through a maze of muddy walking paths as there are no streets. While there we were briefed by Dr. Rob Breiman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who is a former colleague from my days at CDC, and the clinic's director, Salim Mohammed. The clinic took two years to build and was completed this year. The bricks to build it were all carried by hand down the same narrow, windy path to the site and was built by the community.

The clinic partners with the CDC to identify trends in infectious diseases and develop programs to meet the highest priorities for improving health. They also integrate HIV training, reproductive health and antenatal care. About 150-200 people visit this clinic every day.

Staff also do home visits to households every other week, asking questions to identify possible health issues. For example, if someone has a cough or potential complications with a pregnancy, it initiates a specific set of questions to help determine the whether there is a problem that needs attention. I had the chance to go on a home visit to meet with a woman named Cynthia, a mother of five. It was interesting to see how the local health worker, Jaciuta, gathered surveillance information on Cynthia's family that was logged on a handheld PDA – technology put to good use. This allowed the home health worker to go back to the office and upload household health information on a daily basis. Sure beats old fashion paper record keeping!

From there, we walked through another part of Kibera to meet with a group of women. They told us about the daily struggles they face as well as some of the support they receive from a woman named Judy, a retired nurse who started her own organization that CARE supports as a local partner through our Local Links program. Judy helps the women start small businesses, like selling vegetables, to earn their own income.

The story of one woman, Mwinza Mwema, especially impressed me. She has seven children and two orphans in her care. Her vegetable stand was burned to the ground during the post-election violence in Kenya last year but she didn't give up hope. She takes on jobs washing clothes and dishes, making a little over a dollar a day. It never ceases to amaze me the resilience of women like Mwinza, who continues to have a positive attitude despite the hardship she faces. This is a woman who survived home childbirth, cutting the umbilical cords herself because she couldn't afford to go to a hospital. She was lucky to have survived and that her children still have a mother. She mentioned other women she knew who didn't survive home childbirth, a common practice in poor areas. Hopefully as more clinics like Tabitha go up, more people will start accessing health and family planning services.

During lunch we spoke with Peter Anyang Nyong, minister for medical services, who noted health challenges in Kenya, and how improving infrastructure and human resources are critical to the country's development.

(L to R: Admiral Fallon, Minister for Medical Services Peter Anyang Nyongo and me at lunch)

From there we drove to Pumwani Maternity Hospital for our final visit of the day. According to the director, Dr. Charles Wanyoni, it's the busiest maternal health hospital on the continent. This year, he said they've experienced seven maternal deaths for some 11,000 deliveries. He noted that "when it's this busy you can expect complicated cases." The hospital has two operating rooms, one antenatal clinic, family planning services, services to prevent mother-child transmission of HIV and comprehensive care. Because it's located right next to Kibera, many women and girls who deliver there have to work out with a hospital committee how they will pay for services – approximately $40 for a normal delivery and double that if a caesarean-section is needed.

(Here I am visiting the Pumwani Maternal Health Hospital's neonatal unit.)

Because the hospital was built in 1926, it was obvious they've have to expand, which is a constant struggle when facing high demand and low funding. It was good to see that the CDC is supporting the hospital with a laboratory, and it also receives PEPFAR (the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) funding. The hospital staff has aspirations for developing their infrastructure during the next five years to include things like a new water system and more skills training workshops for staff.

I really hope for the day when poor women can focus on getting the care they need without putting themselves in precarious financial positions that deepens their poverty. This is what I will continue to push for: more investment in maternal health and family planning. These issues really need to become a priority, not just in Kenya, but  on a global scale.

Tonight, I have to brush off the dust from today's trip to wear another hat: meeting with health leaders and key donors at the residence of U.S. Ambassador Ranneberger. More tomorrow!

Blog on her recent trip to Ghana by Sarah Blizzard, Development Writer, CARE

Today, I received one of the most meaningful gifts I have ever been given – a bouquet of flowers from the Girls' Club in the village of Manso Nkwanta in the Ashanti region of Ghana.

We’ll be watching the film “A Powerful Noise” and participating in a live town hall discussion with panelists Madeleine Albright, Natalie Portman, Nicholas Kristof, Christy Turlington Burns and Helene Gayle. Can you imagine – being able to discuss women’s empowerment and fighting poverty with the likes of them?   

The group works so well together, they have undertaken a major investment in a new business. In the next couple of months, they will start raising poultry. Each member has already committed 3,000 Malawian Kwacha (about $20) to have the coop constructed. It stands at the ready. After they have saved a total of 110,000 Kwacha ($760), they'll be ready for CARE to help them arrange the purchase and transport of the chicks, feed and other supplies to start the new venture.
   

I watched a woman named Rhoshida harvest her groundnuts – you might recognize them as peanuts – as the sun sank behind mountains south of Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. It was a beautiful scene for a couple of reasons. First, the setting was spectacular. More importantly, there before me was a woman who was harvesting the fruits of her labor, part of a plentiful growing season that would feed her family throughout the year.

Photographer Phil Borges traveled for two weeks in May to Malawi with colleague filmmaker/photographer Smith Patrick to learn about how women's village savings and loan associations impact families and communities. It was Phil's seventh trip with CARE.

A village savings and loan association is a group of 10-20 members – usually women – who save small sums of money each week to create a fund from which they can access loans. The loans are used to start or expand small businesses, and are repaid with interest. With the income from interest and their individual enterprises, women are able to improve the health, education and well-being of their families.

The FY08/09 Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill, signed into law by President Bush on Monday, June 30, will enable the United States to spend an additional $1.245 billion on international food aid donations in this year and next, as donor countries work to relieve the devastating effects of soaring food and fuel prices on the world’s poor. Included in the funding is $50 million to be used to purchase food on the ground at the local or regional level of the recipient countries. This first time shift by the U.S. government of freeing some money to buy food within countries ─ thus aiding local economies and alleviating the heavy costs of transporting food from the U.S to Africa and other places  ─ is an important step in more effectively fighting the food crisis.

“Extreme poverty can be ended in our lifetime.”

If you believe this, you are:

a) Optimistic bordering on delusional.

b) A rock star with a cause.

c) A liberal policy wonk.

d) A level-headed realist who believes humans have the capacity and creativity to solve tough problems.

Maybe ending poverty isn’t such a nutty idea.