A Grandmother Finds WORTH in Zambia

Maweta Tembo sits among her four small grandchildren in the village of Chiwala, part of the Chongwe District outside of Lusaka, Zambia. A 72-year-old widow, Maweta has already raised six children of her own but now must care for her grandchildren, whose parents were killed by AIDS.

Before the PCI-led WORTH program, each day was a struggle for the grandmother. With little money, her grandchildren often went without food and she could not afford the fees required for them to attend school. But now, there is hope for Maweta.
In the Chongwe district, there are currently 5,000 women enrolled in the WORTH program. Combined, these women provide care for 11,550 orphans and vulnerable children. WORTH empowers these women by providing them access to literacy classes and economic training. With help from local organizations, women are encouraged to form self-managed community groups and taught how to manage and save money. The savings are used to create village banks that can provide local women with microenterprise loans.

After attending a WORTH community orientation, Maweta began mobilizing women in her village to form a group. After nine months, Maweta has learned how to read and write and gained basic math and accounting skills.

In January 2007, Maweta sold mangoes and managed to save $60. She used the money to buy school requisites for her grandchildren so they can continue with their education. She also received a loan from the village bank in order to start a business. Maweta is currently buying fast selling food items and re-packaging them into smaller and affordable sizes for her customers. The profit realized from the business goes towards meeting her grandchildren’s basic needs and she no longer feels the worrisome financial burden she once did.
"If WORTH had been launched years back in my area I would have been rich and my own children could have been educated!" Maweta said.

For more information on PCI’s work in Zambia, visit http://www.projectconcern.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Responding_to_the_AIDS_Crisis_in_Zambia.

Teaching by Example: The Story of Mariel

Like every morning, in a warm sector of the municipality of Santibáñez in Bolivia, anxious students of the Luís Guzmán Araujo School sit outside and wait happily, expressed through their small smiling faces. It is the beginning of a new school day and the boys and girls of the fourth grade, with their typical childhood curiosity, anxiously await the beginning of the day to learn more about the problem of environmental contamination, which days before their professor, Norma Cabas, taught them, using the knowledge imparted on her by Project Concern International.

Mariel Rodríguez Antezana, a lively and highly observant nine-year old girl who attends this school daily, tells us that her greatest aspiration is to become a teacher. With her high level of intelligence, she was quick to realize the harm that the plastic bags and bottles strewn about her community were causing to the environment.

Conscious of this harm, Mariel quickly learned to recycle this material and converted herself into a teacher's helper, telling her classmates to transform the same harmful material into pretty and useful crafts, like beautifully knit tablecloths, placemats, and bags.

This young but great teacher, with hope lighting up her face, now works laboriously together with her classmates that consider her their leader in the war against plastic.

Upon asking her what would be her greatest wish if she could have anything in the world, without a doubt in her voice Mariel answered, "I want to keep studying."

Just as it does in the Luís Guzmán Araujo School, PCI works to promote the recycling of plastic bags in more than 1,200 schools in Bolivia, and has educated to date many children like Mariel, who learn to take action in order to care for our environment.

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To learn more about PCI's work in Bolivia, please visit http://www.projectconcern.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Combating_malnutrition_and_poverty_in_Bolivia.

Project Concern and the International Year of Sanitation
- Katrina Lee
As an intern for Project Concern International, I’ve noticed that many of the topics on this blog deal with predominantly poverty and health issues. A topic that really interested me of late was PCI’s involvement with the UN’s International Year of Sanitation. Backed by the UN’s Millennium Development goals, member nations will report back to the UN on May 2008 to update on their progress in improving areas such as access to water, adequate drainage systems, housing quality, and waste management.

Access to clean water and adequate sanitation for developing communities is a major aspect of PCI’s programmatic focus and is a critical component in improving overall health for families in need. Since 2004, PCI has been implementing in a project called CASCADA, which promotes the creation of regional and national water sanitation systems that work to improve sanitation in some of the poorest areas of Central America. In Nicaragua, CASCADA has helped reorganize the country’s National Water and Sanitation Network and created four additional networks as well as community-based sanitation organizations such as community water boards.

While Project Concern International operates various other programs, I believe that CASCADA is unique in its ability to address sanitation issues at the government level while fully involving the local community. In a greater context, I believe that the International Year of Sanitation is one of the most significant milestones in progressive development. Today, simple issues such as the availability of clean water and waste removal seem far-fetched to many because of the reaches of modernization. It is important to realize that many communities to this day still lack these basic amenities.

We at PCI are committed to providing access to these basic needs, and look forward to seeing increasing progress on this front during 2008, the International Year of Sanitation.