rather large group of people from HEAL. She will be there for a month
studying microeconomic enterprises for her schooling. The team however
will be doing a lot of different things and will be there for more than
a month. About 20 people have been at HEAL from the province doing
training and attending a conference about various things and they are
being accompanied back to Maniema by about 5 HEAL staff from the Heal My
People program.
Heal My People was started at HEAL Africa because after the women who
were repaired from fistula surgery and sexual violence counseling were
going back to their communities, there was nothing for them to really go
back to and the situation was unsafe. Heal My People works in a
holistic capacity and I'll highlight some of the things that they are doing.
They work with training counselors to identify and counsel women who
have been sexually abused. These field workers are trained in what to
say, how to help encourage women, and help them move on with their
lives. They also help identify women who need to come to HEAL for surgery.
Microeconomic projects are started in the communities and evaluated.
The projects focus mainly on widows and victims of sexual violence and
they are designed to help them re-enter society. Often widows and
victims of sexual violence are outcasts in society and they live on the
margins of a village scraping together a subsistence. The microeconomic
projects help the women and also the community at large by providing
services and goods. Many of the women who come to HEAL for surgery or
further healing learn how to read, write, sew, or do crafts and these
are sometimes used in the projects as well as any other ideas the women
might have.
Mawe Hai also plays a part in the holistic approach of Heal My People.
People come to Mawe Hai for training and some of the widows are trained
in vegetable production and they can take that back to their communities
with them. Mawe Hai tests seed varieties and production practices to
see which ones are the best and then takes those technologies into the
communities, and Heal My People is one way that happens both with just
training and with microeconomic projects started with knowledge and
skills from Mawe.
They sometimes also do things such as family mediation (making peace in
families) and trying to educate communities on everything from AIDS to
nutrition to agriculture. They often work through faith organizations
(usually churches and mosques) and they use natural or indigenous
organization structures to reach people.
It is kind of hard for me to see where one project at HEAL ends and
where another begins and that is because there is no end and beginning.
Instead of a flow chart sort of thing showing all the different projects
of HEAL and their different aspects, I needed a web diagram to show how
things interrelate. Once I started making the diagram in my head, it
just got huge and pretty much every aspect had a line drawn to every
other aspect somehow. HEAL does a good job of using all the resources
available to holistically develop communities. Please pray for the
Maniema team: for their safety, their health, their effectiveness in the
communities, and their effectiveness on people's lives.
1 comment:
Well said.
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