Whitney Goldman

Health 3

Nyaruguru District

Last week, I was privileged enough to participate in the 8th Annual National Pediatric Conference on Children Infected and Affected by HIV and AIDS.  The conference theme, “Strengthening Community Outreach for Equitable, Effective and Sustainable Response to HIV Among Children in Rwanda” was particularly relevant to Peace Corps volunteers’ mission and work at the grassroots level. 

The conference included 4 major themes: 1. Family as a key source of information to improve knowledge on HIV prevention for adolescents and young people, 2. Strengthening Rwanda community engagement to adequately use quality child protection systems to mitigate the impact of HIV among vulnerable children, 3. Community engagement toward elimination of mother to child HIV transmission, 4. Strengthening community ownership for equitable, effective, and sustainable response to HIV care and treatment among children in Rwanda.  Each topic was addressed at either morning or afternoon sessions over the course of two days.  While many interesting topics were covered, for the purposes of this post, I’d like to highlight the disproportionate disease burden of HIV on young women in Rwanda, some recommendations that came as a result of the conference, and highlight the contributions PCVs in Rwanda are making to meeting those recommendations.

One topic discussed across presentations was the disproportionate prevalence of HIV among adolescent girls relative to their male counterparts.  According to a presentation by Dr. Placidie MUGWANEZA, the prevalence of HIV+ persons among 15-49 year olds is 3.7% for females and 2.2% for males.  The proportional discrepancy is larger when looking exclusively at youth. Prevalence among youth aged 15-19 is 0.8% for females and 0.3% for males. Presenters pointed to this data as evidence for a need to create programming targeted to young girls in an attempt to reduce their risk of contracting HIV.

Conference attendees cited the need to move from large-scale national campaigns to community-based programming to protect girls from SGBV and the “sugar daddy” effect while also increasing access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services.  Specifically, participants pointed to the “SINIGURISHA” (I am not for sale) campaign, running from 2009-2010. The campaign brought awareness to the issue of girls and young women having sex in exchange for money and material goods, but did not include specific and targeted programs to confront the reasons young girls participate in this exchange.

As GAD Vice-Chair, I want to highlight the efforts Peace Corps volunteers in Rwanda are making to address the unique needs of adolescents in SRH. Working largely in schools and health centers across the country, volunteers serve as grassroots implementers for community-based health programming.  Most notably, volunteers continue to plan and implement youth development camps and school clubs, tackling the difficult topic of SRH with young people.  Camps and clubs strive to tackle both the biological (HIV and STI disease progression, transmission, prevention, and family planning methods) and social (Self-esteem, goal-setting, peer pressure, leadership skills and opportunities) components of SRH in a judgment-free, youth-friendly environment. I’m proud to be part of a program and organization that has a commitment to developing a discourse around these important topics and providing tangible skills to kids living and studying at our sites throughout Rwanda. 

Each year, we continue to build the capacity of our community partners to take the lead in hosting camps. Additionally, we improve the model through sharing best practices annually, as it expands to more communities in Rwanda. As we’re back in full-swing camp season, I would like to wish everyone hosting GLOW and BE a happy and successful camp and express my gratitude for your hard work.  Keep up the good work!

If you haven’t read or seen pictures from Peace Corps Rwanda BE (Boys Excelling) and GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) programming, take a look through previous posts on this blog.

GET VACCINATED

Rita Hawkins

Health 3

Nyaruguru District

Greetings!

I wanted to take a little bit of time and talk about vaccinations in Rwanda.  Every Tuesday at my health center in Nyaruguru district children come from the neighboring villages to have their children vaccinated. On average we have about thirty children, of course depending on the month this can vary from ten to fifty. These children range in age from hours old to nine months with a healthy divide between girls and boys and the occasional set of twins.

We start each day with greetings to the mother’s and or father’s whoever has brought their child in for their immunizations. Although the majority is mothers, fathers have been taking a stronger more active role in the health care of their children.  After greeting everyone, a collection is made of their ‘fiche’ or their medical card, with information ranging from the name of the child, date of birth, mother and father’s name, location of home and inside growth charts with weight and age also called their BMI.

Once this collection is made in no less than four books is this information recorded and updated depending on the number of visits had already by the child. There are a total of five visits; first the child will receive their BCG, the first polio shot and a fiche then at nine months finish with a VAR (measles) and the distribution of a mosquito net.  This information is carefully collected and recorded not only for the health center at hand but also for the district hospital and for the national registration of children tracked by the Ministry of Health in Rwanda. 

Finally the day is finished with the nurse or doctor helping with vaccinations giving the children their immunizations one at a time. A side note, to compare American children and the children of Rwanda, the Rwandan children seem to cry a lot less or at least for a shorter amount of time in comparison.  But, this has turned in to one of the most rewarding days, you are able as volunteer to meet all the mama’s from your village and neighboring ones and meet their children for the first time.  It has also been a side project of my own to record the new mothers who have given birth at the health center and the ones that have elected to birth at home or somewhere else for example the hospital.

I have noticed as I have worked in this department for the past year and half that mother’s have been the primary parent who bring the children to these days of vaccinations, although I am seeing more and more as time goes on that father’s have been coming alone with their children to receive their immunizations. I think it is a true sign of development that  time has progressed enough that Rwanda has begun to change from the old ways of mother’s being the one that are issued the task of taking care of health issues for their children. Father’s are becoming more active in this part of their children’s lives.   It speaks volumes about the development of Rwanda and the importance that has been placed on bring children in for vaccinations and continuing  until it is complete at nine months. I will continue to work in this department until my time is finished in Rwanda in 2013 and will continue to enjoy it every week. I look forward to seeing the progression of vaccination days and the involvement of parents, and remember GET YOUR CHILDREN IMMUNIZED!

International Girls' Day Essay Competition Winners by Sarah D.

    

Sarah Doyle

Ed2 - Kigali City

For International Girls' Day on October 11th, PCVs teamed up with Girl Hub, part of the Nike Foundation, to do an essay competition at some of our schools. The winners for both Kinyarwanda and English were sent along to me to select a few to go into Girl Hub's magazine, Ni Nyampinga. The magazine LOVED the essays and will be publishing excerpts from them all in the coming issue, but I thought this would be a good forum to post the English essays in their entirety. The question that we posed to the students was: "Why do you value yourself and what can you do to help develop your community?" Very often our students struggle with critical thinking, but I'm sure you'll agree, the essays below are very powerful and speak to the growing determination of young girls in Rwanda to not only study and create a future for themselves, but also to help their communities.

So now for the winners...

KABASINGA Flaviah, S6HEG, 18 years old

College De Rushaki, Gicumbi District, Northern Province

PCV: Lucy Sung

Why do I value myself and What can I do for my community?

Value is something inside which makes one to be more important and to be useful. One can be valued according to how one values herself in the society or among other people.

 I value myself in order to gain self respect among others and this self respect cannot be given to me when I have not known the value I have. When one values herself, it will make her gain responsibility in the community because everyone believes that she has knowledge and she is capable of doing everything for the society.

I value myself so that I can uplift and restore the traditional culture of our community because culture makes all the people in the society to be unite and respective of each other.

When I value myself, I gain confidence and hope in myself to work and develop my community in order to achieve development and prosperity to the nation. The value I give to myself makes it easier for to plan for my future because when I get to know the value I have, I don’t let it down but I fight to make it better even for people to honour me.

I value myself because am a co-creator of God so I have to make sure that God has more value than everything and I have to value myself so that God can be happy with me through showing good examples to other creatures.

I value myself because am a coordinator of all living things in the world .I have the power and supremacy to control and manage everything in the world.

Value brings hope, peace, and love in the society that is why I value myself because when I respect others they also respect me, which makes us equal ad makes me more valuable.

Value brings harmony in the society because when I value myself and others, I give a good example to others which makes the society to live happily.

All I can do for my community is to keep the value of our society is to respect each other and encourage them to have love, patience, and courage in what they do. For my community, I can encourage them to have the spirit of the traditional culture and nationalism in order to keep stability in the society. Encouraging people to have confidence and to work hard in order to achieve development which can value our community. I can help my community to teach them what value is, why they need it, and how they can achieve it, because value makes people to known their human rights.

_________________________________________________________________

UWIMBABAZI Gemime, Senior 6 MCB

E.S. BUGARAMA, Rusizi District, Western Provinc

PCV: Jeff Monsma

I know I have value because:

- I’m able to teach other girls.

- I’m able to be and I will become a good leader.

- I’m able to advise others.

- I have the chance to study, while before girls didn’t get that chance.

- I have my self-esteem!

- I know how to prevent AIDS.

- I am able to fight against peer pressure.

- I have the power to change the world.

- I am able to create friendship between students.

- I behave well

- I am able to run the world, teaching women and girls about how they

can have self esteem, how they can fight peer pressure, and so on. And

I’ll do it because everything is possible!