-
“I’m inspired by the work of Peace Corps Volunteers around the world. Volunteers share their creativity and compassion with...
-
-
“
Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy. There will be no salary and allowances will be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and meet...
” -
“It’s very good news that the Global Fund is re-opening for business. Now we can stop wasting time, which is the most precious resource in this fight...”
-
The most difficult challenge is leaving - Peace Corps Print Public Service Announcement
Crossing Sectors
Volunteers from all 4 sectors are teaming up to prevent malaria in their communities in Madagascar. With no health volunteer around, education PCV Stephanie Edwards and Environment PCV David Illgen, took it upon themselves to talk to various groups about malaria prevention.
Photos: Chalkboard brainstorming at the Girls’ Club session before the malaria song was created. David Illgen, a volunteer whose main assignment is with marine conservation taking a night to teach the local English club in Maroantsetra about malaria.
Crossing Sectors
Volunteers from all 4 sectors are teaming up to prevent malaria in their communities in Madagascar. With no health volunteer around, education PCV Stephanie Edwards and Environment PCV David Illgen, took it upon themselves to talk to various groups about malaria prevention.
The video featured here is their girls’ club song. The Girls Club that Stephanie works with singing the song about malaria prevention and treatment.
In Madagascar, the South Eastern region has been hardest hit by malaria in recent years. This year for World Malaria Day, the Sud Est Volunteers really took action, with an eight community malaria fighting bike tour. The bike tour, largely fueled by the regions three health volunteers: Raffaele Macri, Brittany Bemis and Yu Sun, included many of the volunteers from the region joining and stopping off in the towns along the way.
In each town a malaria prevention mural was painted, which translated states “Fight against malaria; prevention is better than treatment” and then shows examples of prevention, symptoms and treatment. The painting of the mural was followed by Volunteers setting up a market booth for a day so that they could talk to the community about malaria prevention and treatment: they completed various neem cream demonstrations, worked with the local community health workers to talk about the importance of early treatment seeking behavior and IPTp use, and gave a demonstration about the simplicity of RDTs.
As we’re now learning from our partners, the Medecin Inspecteur from the region is so happy with the work that the Peace Corps volunteers did, that he is hoping to have a similar program and mural painted at all of the CSBs in the region. So, keep an eye out for the malaria bike tour 2013!
Nothing like a little friendly competition.
The month of April marked Malaria Month here in Madagascar, and along with that came the malaria month competition. Volunteers were challenging each other by region for most malaria projects and third goal activities completed. There were guidelines for the amount of points that certain activities would be worth, for example a neem cream demonstration was worth 20 points, while a blog was worth 10, but volunteers got very creative with their own ideas and activities.
In the end 57 of around 140 volunteers in country and all 29 Trainees participated in the competition. And 55 of those volunteers participated in third goal activities, posting on facebook, blogging and tweeting about malaria in Madagascar and what Peace Corps volunteers are doing to prevent it.
Final Tally:
Region: Average points per volunteer (total points)
1. SUD EST: 65.3 (1240 PTS)
2. LAC ALAOTRA: 38 (228 PTS)
3. MAROANTSETRA: 35 (140 PTS)
4. FIANARANTSOA: 27.9 (475 PTS)
5. MAHAJANGA: 17.5 (70 PTS)
6. FT. DAUPHIN: 22.9 (160 PTS)
7. DIANA: 9.7 (155 PTS)
8. ANTANANARIVO: 5 (155 PTS)
Malaria Murals across Madagascar!
- Volunteers grid a mural template in order to transfer the image to a wall in their community.
- PC Staff and the Environment and Community Economic Development trainees finishing their mural in Mantasoa, Madagascar.
- PCVs Paul Johnson, Yu Sun, Matt Simms, and Maria Wimsatt with one of their eight murals in the South East of Madagascar.
- Health PCV Teena Curry (far right), with the Lycée Youth Group who completed the mural in Amparafaravola, Madagascar
- Mural in Djangoa, Madagascar done by PCV Katie Minton
Focusing in on the Future.
Monica Skelton, a health volunteer in the south of Madagascar, turned what was originally an idea for a simple World Malaria Day project into a multiple week event to educate youth and their families about malaria prevention. She went around to every house in the small villages - fokontanys - surrounding her commune, to take pictures of families who already properly use mosquito nets for her community’s “wall of fame” for malaria fighters. “I would say generally about half the families in all the small villages I visited actually used a bed net to sleep under. I did hit the jackpot though in this little village community called Maromoky that literally means ‘lots of mosquitoes’…every family there uses a bed net!” said Monica. Throughout her World Malaria Day outreach events, Monica and her counterparts identified an important barrier to malaria prevention that we are now sharing with our partners and other volunteers here in Madagascar: it’s not that most families don’t use mosquito nets, it’s that often only the adults sleeping under them because they are the family members that get to sleep on the bed. The children sleep on mats on the floor and are left unprotected during the night. This little piece of information has help volunteers design more effective behavior change communication projects surrounding malaria prevention here in Madagascar.
Everyone was invited to the events held in the commune center: the painting of a mural depicting the transmission of malaria and the importance of using a mosquito net every night, a session on dream banners, and ending with a community skit.
Working with the youth in her community proved to be most rewarding, especially while doing projects that related malaria prevention to kids’ futures, like Dream Banners. In her own words: “All the kids who attended my malaria day activities were given paper and crayons and asked to illustrate their answer to the question ‘When I grow up I will…’ This was my favorite activity of all the things we did on World Malaria Day. Creativity and individuality are not things that are valued here in terms of the education system. Little kids don’t color in their free time, and generally don’t even know how to hold a pen until they go to school when they’re 6 years old. In their first year of school, they study how to draw and then get tested and scored on their drawing abilities. So this whole exercise in creativity was something that all the kids had actually never done before. Asking them to wrap their little minds around the abstract idea of the future was really challenging, but I am so happy with the way things worked out. They drew big houses and farm fields and flowers and happy families and cows. They wrote their names in huge letters and asked if they were allowed to keep their masterpieces. When I asked some of them to explain what they drew, their responses were simple: ‘This is my house that I’ll live in, this is my family being happy, this is the flower that will grow where I live.’ I was really proud of the fact that all my kids were able to grasp what I was asking them to do in imagining their futures. It also made me so happy just to provide the opportunity for them to have this small creative outlet. Watching this small army of kids walk home clutching their small drawings created with the one color crayon I handed out per kid made me feel more validated than all the other activities I did on World Malaria Day.”
