Complete!

The addition to our CSCOM (health center) is complete, we have a new maternity in Niasso!

Thank you to everyone who helped, through all forms of support, to complete this project. The women now have a brand new facility for their pre- and post-natal appointments, birthing, and child vaccinations and baby weighing, and they are beyond thrilled.

This project has been at times trying and at (most) other times eye opening and inspiring. Before the money we needed to collect was even guaranteed, the village had already gathered the materials they were supplying and had begun to make the bricks that constituted part of their community contribution. Before the project had the go-ahead, they already had faith in it.

When things began to look less positive, when our budget was about to be cut or when we had a change of Chef de Poste (director/main doctor at the health center), those involved in the project still held fast. They pushed on and held my spirits high when I was unsure of the future of the center. A community I was sent here to help helped me in the long run.

In addition, thanks to extra donations from an anonymous donor, we were able to give the women's Savings for Change group a large donation. This group was established through Oxfam in order to work with women's groups at the village level. The group provides small loans to women in the community on a quarterly basis. The group meets weekly to collect a small amount of change from each woman to put into the communal pot. When the time comes, women can petition to receive a small loan, which they then have 3 months to pay back little by little.

These loans can be used for anything, and usually are used for securing initial materials to begin an income generating activity such as soap making or selling of treats at market. These IGA's (income generating activities) help to provide women with a personal income, something many women cannot count on. They use funds for things like new fabrics for clothes for themselves and their children or paying for adult literacy classes. Some even to purchase birth control and other birth spacing tools at the CSCOM pharmacy with out having to ask their husbands for the money since many might not approve of it.