April is Blog About Malaria Month (BAMM)! This year’s theme: Invest in the future, defeat Malaria.
Malaria kills more than 660,000 people every year, 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, the World Health Assembly made April 25 World Malaria Day. To educate the public on this curable disease, information is distributed in the form of events, trainings, community health outreach and the like to help reach the 2015 Millenium Development Goal. Peace Corps Volunteers work in the community with local people, NGOs and the President’s Malaria Initiative to eradicate the disease. Peace Corps’ has rolled out a great initiative to help stop this disease. The program called Stomping Out Malaria uses the power of more than 3,000 Peace Corps Volunteers across Africa to help ‘stomp out this disease’.
Check out http://stompoutmalaria.org/bamm2013/ for more information!
The success of last year’s Malaria education event at our school has inspired the students to continue with similar Malaria prevention activities!! This year students will write prevention messages on every blackboard, perform for the student body and create Malaria prevention messages to be posted on all the dormitories here at the school. Read below success story for details!
Students Act Against Malaria
Empowering girls to mobilize communities
Kayuki Girls Secondary School is an all-girls boarding school located in the Rungwe District of Mbeya in Tanzania. Absenteeism was on the rise as students missed classes due to illness. Community members identified a lack of bed-net usage as a chronic problem at the school. They decided to do something about it. Further education would be needed to raise awareness about the disease. A Small Project Assistance grant was requested by the community to help. PCV Folake Oyegbola strongly supported the project and with that a Malaria Education Day program was scheduled for the school.
The community decided on an education-through-the-arts style program as the best medium to reach the 550+ students. 17 students were chosen to be Student Health Ambassadors for the program. The students attended a half-day training program which included a Malaria 101 lesson, interactive Malaria-themed games and the creation of various artworks to be displayed throughout the school. Their acquired knowledge on Malaria cause, spread and prevention was determined through the administration of a pre- and post-test. The community was happy to discover that no one scored below 90%!
The student body enjoyed three skits performed by the Student Health Ambassadors for the evening portion of the program. Throughout the night, students answered questions related to the disease. The event concluded with a viewing of the Malaria-themed film: Chumo.
Throughout the process the project committee tailored the program to best meet the needs of the community. The budget was revised with sustainability in mind. Additional resources were donated and members from the surrounding villages were invited to partake in the event.The students were empowered with skills and knowledge to affect positive change. They were motivated to take ownership over an issue that is affecting their community. They continue to use their leadership skills to demonstrate to the student body the importance of Malaria education and prevention.
“We have 565 students here at this event. If each one goes home to their family to share the information, a large number of the population will be educated about Malaria.”
This event was featured on Stomp Out Malaria website. Read the article here
Want to get involved? Follow these tips from the Stomp Out Malaria website:http://stompoutmalaria.org/bamm2013/
Spread the word
The more people that care about malaria prevention, the better. Make your voice
Writing your elected officials. Let them know that US government efforts are
the cornerstone of the international malaria prevention efforts that save the
lives of 485 children a day.
Tell your friends and family about the importance of malaria prevention.
Share stompoutmalaria.org via FaceBook, Twitter, iMessage and megaphone!
Donate to Peace Corps Partnerships Malaria Fund:
Donations to the malaria fund provide grants to the small (under $5,000)
community driven projects that Peace Corps excels at. Help communities that want
to ensure all their children sleep under a bed net. Help entrepreneurs build
businesses selling mosquito net hammocks. Help train community health workers to
diagnose and treat their own community members so that they don’t need to walk
10 plus miles for clinical care.