Having Impact On Women’s Health

Since November, our CDI team in Kara-Suu has been working on a women’s health project which focuses on pregnant women.

At first, we ran several seminars that worked with different local clinics. Though many women attended, we noticed that because of the clinic venue, some of the women were embarrassed to speak up in front of the Nurses and others they didn’t know. We wanted to find a way to reach more women in an environment that was comfortable for them, so that they could interact and ask questions without feeling embarrassed.

For this reason, we started a series of 6 lessons in a village instead of at the clinics. This enabled the women to relax among friends, and the whole community learned the important health lessons together, passing on what they had learned to those who couldn’t attend.

To find openings into more communities, we spoke with the local government women’s leader, asking her advice on what she thought was the best way to gather women. She invited us to come back this week and talk with the local women’s leaders, so they can meet us and then invite us into their communities. First we explained about our projects and suggested that we could run them in their areas. We went on to teach a sample from our first health lesson covering ‘What is True Health?’ and ‘Understanding the Women’s Cycle’.

Towards the end, one lady who had missed our explanation in the beginning, said “I have a question, why are you only teaching us? You need to come to our communities and tell our daughters and daughter-in-laws!” Exactly!

We now have multiple invites to local communities around our area and we’re looking into how we can increase the impact of this training so more women can benefit.