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Beat on the Ground
Making Life Easier in Rural Tanzania
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.MORE
Rukia Seif is a population, health, environment (PHE) peer educator who promotes simple economic, environmental, and health behaviors that make sense. In many ways, the Mkalamo village where Rukia lives is a typical rural Tanzanian agricultural village. In another important way it is very different. Mkalamo abuts the biodiversity rich Saadani National Park – the only wildlife park in Tanzania that borders the sea. Ironically, this park does not make life easier for people living in Mkalamo but more difficult. In the park, there is a ban on the cutting of wood, making it difficult to find enough to fuel villagers’ cooking stoves. Also, increasing numbers of the park’s wild animals often destroy the villagers’ precious crops.
As a PHE peer educator, Rukia talks with her fellow community members about simple things they can do to improve their lives. Her messages are clear:- By planning their families, women can ensure their own and their children’s health and can decide the optimal number of children that they can provide for.
- By using fuel efficient stoves, women can spend less time collecting fire wood, freeing up time for other chores or livelihood activities and reducing the amount of needed fuel, thus helping sustain the forests for future generations.
- By joining community-led savings and credit associations, women and men gain access to capital, allowing them to scale-up current livelihoods or diversify to new sources of income.
Rukia sets a good example of how doing these simple things can improve a family’s life and protect the environment. At age 36, she is a mother of three girls, ages 14, 12, and one and a half. Rukia and her husband, Seif Ramadhani, are taking measures to plan their family. Rukia used pills before they decided to have their last daughter. Now they are using condoms as a back-up while Rukia is breastfeeding the baby. Through her work, Rukia meets and talks to many people every day. She discusses family planning and if someone is interested, she refers them to community-based distributors and the dispensary for family planning services.
“I talk to my peers about planning their families so we have enough natural resources to meet the needs of the villagers who depend on these resources,” she said. “Also, when you plan your family, you will get more time to perform other activities.”
An active member of the savings and credit association, where she also acts as the accountant, Rukia is living proof of this last statement. Through savings and loans, Rukia has diversified her income by buying a sewing machine and a fuel-efficient oven. Today, she generates income from cow and poultry husbandry, tailoring, bread-making, selling soft drinks, and constructing fuel-efficient stoves. With this increased income, Rukia and her husband have been able to put an iron sheet roof on their house and send their first-born daughter to secondary school – a great achievement in a country where only five percent of women stay in school beyond the primary level.
Rukia demonstrated her two fuel-efficient stoves: one is a metal oven that she uses for baking breads and cakes, the other is a simple mud stove that she uses for cooking. The mud stove, which costs less than $2 to build, is getting increasingly popular in the community. It saves fuel wood, prevents fires, produces less smoke (a serious health hazard), and cooks the food faster!
“I can even wear my best clothes and put on some lip shine when I use this stove, because it does not foul up the air,” Rukia explains with a laugh. Seeing the benefits of the fuel efficient stoves, she has inspired ten community-based distributors and five village leaders to join the team of individuals showcasing the fuel efficient technologies.
Rukia is a perfect example of practicing what one preaches. She is improving her own life, helping others learn to do the same, and protecting the very natural resources upon which almost everyone in Mkalamo depends.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered. -
From the Wilson Center
Integrating Development: A Livelihood Approach to Population, Health, and Environment Programs
MORERural communities in developing countries understand that high population growth rates, poor health, and environmental degradation are connected, said Population Action International’s Roger-Mark De Souza at a recent Wilson Center event. An integrated approach to development – one that combines population, health, and environment (PHE) programs – is a “cost-effective intervention that we can do very easily, that responds to community needs, that will have a huge impact that’s felt within a short period of time,” said De Souza. “This is how we live our lives, this makes sense to us – it’s completely logical,” community participants in PHE projects told him.
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The Continuing Challenges of Integrated Development
March 20, 2011 // By Schuyler NullMORE“How are we going to feed all these mouths?” asked Bekele Hambissa, director of the Environmental Protection and Development Organization in Addis, on day two of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium general assembly (read about day one here). Environmental resources are directly tied to Ethiopia’s population growth, said Hambissa, during a discussion of balancing efforts to address population growth, environment, and livelihoods. While poverty alleviation is an important goal of population, health, and environment integration (PHE), it must be environmentally sustainable, he said.
Topics: Africa, agriculture, community-based, cooperation, development, Ethiopia, From Ethiopia, PHE, population, poverty, water -
Watch: Roger-Mark De Souza on the Scaling Advantages of Population, Health, and Environment Integration
March 11, 2011 // By Schuyler NullBy integrating population, health, and environment (PHE) efforts, development programs can make a difference in people’s lives in a real and meaningful way – one which they understand, appreciate, and desire, said Roger-Mark De Souza in this interview with ECSP. De Souza is the vice president of research and director of the Climate Program at Population Action International.MORE
The PHE approach “allows itself to be applied at different levels,” said De Souza. “It’s easily implemented at the level of a village, or a town, or a city where a number of individuals can say ‘these are concrete results and outcomes that we want in our lives and that we want to live our lives in an integrated way.’”
PHE interventions not only provide tangible results to individuals, said De Souza, but they also help accomplish broader policy objectives, including improving health and alleviating poverty.
“There are lessons to be learned from different areas of integration, not just population, health, and environment,” De Souza said. For example, initiatives that integrate food security and HIV/AIDS deal with issues “similar to the ones we deal with in integrating population, health, and environment,” he said. Lessons and experiences need to be shared between these communities, but they also share similar advantages: From a cost-efficiency stand point, integration simply provides greater “bang for the buck,” he said. -
Friday Podcasts
Joan Castro on Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management in the Southern Philippines
MOREIn the southern Philippines, the innovative IPOPCORM program “worked in areas where there is high…marine biodiversity, high population, and high population momentum, which means…about 40 percent of the population are 15 years and below,” Joan Castro told ECSP in this interview. Castro, the executive vice president of PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc., recently spoke at the Wilson Center on the state of integrated development efforts in her country and elsewhere.
From 2000-2006, IPOPCORM (which stands for “integrated population and coastal resource management”) sought to integrate population, health, and environment (PHE) development efforts in Philippine communities. They had four primary objectives, said Castro: 1) improve the reproductive health of the community members; 2) improve management of the coastal resources; 3) increase knowledge of the linkages between population, health, and the environment; and 4) increase the capacity of community leaders to advocate for these links.
“The aspect of livelihoods was very essential,” said Castro, especially for empowering women in the communities. Through family planning services and micro-credit finance initiatives, women were able to better space their pregnancies and contribute to household incomes, she said. In addition, by establishing locally managed, marine protected areas, IPOPCORM increased the protection of high biodiversity zones and improved the likelihood that there will be enough fish to feed future generations.
The “Pop Audio” series is also available as podcasts on iTunes. -
Beat on the Ground
Encouraging Childhood Education and Birth Spacing as an Approach to Conservation
MOREThis PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Fifty-one-year-old Sam Rugaba is a dedicated teacher who loves his job at the Bujengwe Community Primary School. The school is the result of a community-based project located in the Bujengwe Parish of the Kayonza subcounty in the Kanungu district of Uganda – just 18 kilometers from the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP). The biodiversity-rich BINP is home to many rare species including the endangered mountain gorilla. Sam is also a Conservation Through Public Health(CTPH) community volunteer and community conservation health worker. -
Beat on the Ground
Promoting Family Planning and Livelihoods for a Healthy Environment in Uganda
MOREThis PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
Meet 32 year old Ruth Siyage – a wife, mother, peasant farmer, shop owner, and population, health, and environment (PHE) champion. Ruth, her husband, Siyage Benon, and their three healthy daughters – ages 3, 6, and 11 – live about an hour from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in Uganda’s Kanungu District. The 33,000-hectare BINP is a World Heritage Site known for its exceptional biodiversity – with over 200 species of trees, 100 species of ferns, 350 species of birds, 200 species of butterflies, as well as many endangered species, including the mountain gorilla.
In addition to being a peasant farmer who grows potatoes, millet, beans, and groundnuts to feed her family, Ruth also has a small shop in the nearby trading center where she sells groceries and interacts with most of her friends. Ruth first learned of and embraced the PHE approach through a neighbor and local community volunteer, Mrs. Hope Matsiko – one of 29 PHE volunteers trained by the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) programs.
Ruth recalls:Hope used to approach us and tell us about family planning. Others refused to listen, but I took it up. Before, I used to refuse to go to Kajubwe Health Center for services and never got information because it was so far away. However, when Hope, the local volunteer, who is also my neighbor, visited me at home, I got more information about family planning. She also counseled me on the methods I could use, which was best for my health and how to use it. I now use family planning.
As a new champion, Ruth uses several ways to teach her community about family planning and PHE activities. One way is through face-to-face discussions with individuals attending village meetings. She focuses on women she sees often and who she knows have closely-spaced pregnancies. Recently, three of these women started using modern contraceptives.Ruth also spreads her PHE messages through her work with the local women’s association, Kishanda Bakyara Twebiseho (Kishanda Women Livelihoods Association), as an active member of a local church, and as a local village council member. In the council, she is in charge of teaching about agriculture and the environment – a perfect opportunity to share her PHE messages about the linkages between population, health, and the environment. Ruth is a great model of the benefits of taking a PHE approach, with her well-spaced pregnancies – which have helped ensure her own reproductive health and that of her three daughters – and her teaching of others, from what she now knows about the need to keep ourselves and our environment healthy to the impacts of each on the other.
Ruth says she believes that through a PHE approach much can be done and has been done:By teaching people about safe water use, I believe that we can stop diarrhea diseases. And by teaching about sanitation, we can help prevent diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and worms. Now my neighbors seldom get sick. We have a fairly healthy life. When we are not sick, we do not have to sell our goats and land to buy medicine. And when we plan our families, we are better able to care for and educate our children. Through our community sensitization, people now even understand the importance of gorilla conservation.
Ruth is especially appreciative of the CTPH program, which first taught her about and then turned her into an advocate for the integrated PHE approach.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: Silverback mountain gorilla named Mwirima with a juvenille gorilla from the Rusguguar group near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and Ruth and her son in their shop in rural Uganda, courtesy of CTPH.Topics: Africa, Beat on the Ground, community-based, conservation, family planning, forests, PHE, PHE Champion -
Beat on the Ground
Improving Health and Preserving Ecosystems in the Democratic Republic of Congo
MOREThis PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project.
In the remote forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Albert Lotana Lokasola is helping improve livelihoods by bringing much-needed health services to the communities living in and around the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. Officially recognized by the DRC government in May 2009, the reserve is a high biodiversity wilderness area covering an area about the size of Rhode Island (4,785 square kilometers).
Located 300 miles southwest of Kisangani, the reserve contains bonobos, a rare and highly endangered great ape species that is as closely related to humans as chimpanzees. In addition, the reserve is highly valued for its biodiversity, including several other flagship species such as leopards, elephants, Congo peafowl, Tshuapa red colobus, and Salonga monkeys.
Lokasola founded a nationally recognized organization called Vie Sauvage, or “Wild Life” in English. He serves as the president of the organization and works with international organizations to foster conservation and rural development in an integrated, holistic approach. As a native of Kokolopori, he believes that “the forest, men, and wildlife live together and should be protected together.”
In partnership with local residents and supported by the Bonobo Conservation Initiative, Lokasola and Vie Sauvage established the first medical clinic in the area in 2006. They garnered support for a doctor, nurses, and supplies from the Indigo Foundation in Australia and the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership.
Before the clinic was founded, community members had to walk or bicycle more than 50 miles to get to the nearest hospital in the territorial capital of Djolu. Now the Kokolopori clinic serves the 8,000 people who live in 30 villages along a 40-mile road in the reserve. One of the clinic’s goals is to help improve women’s health by training and equipping midwives and by providing access to other health services. Malaria and poor nutrition contribute to high maternal and child mortality, and women in Kokolopori do not yet have access to reproductive health services such as family planning.
Vie Sauvage articulates integrated health and conservation messages through their community education projects. They are also working with the community to prevent malnutrition by planting fruit trees in agroforestry fields to produce supplemental food supplies. At the same time, these trees will create corridors for wildlife movement and protect the genetic flow. They also create a sound micro-climate for people, sequester carbon dioxide, and filter the air. Through these efforts, Vie Sauvage and the people of Kokolopori are demonstrating the critical links between human well-being and conservation.
Vie Sauvage has garnered resources and participation from diverse partners (like the Kokolopori-Falls Church Sister City Partnership and the Indigo Foundation, mentioned above) which work together to support the clinic and fund medical staff salaries, training, supplies and equipment, and infrastructure improvements.
According to Lokasola, Vie Sauvage and partners are currently exploring potential partnership opportunities to integrate family planning and reproductive health into existing activities. His hope is that by providing these much-needed services, the community will be healthier and critical ecosystems will be sustainably preserved.
This PHE Champion profile was produced by the BALANCED Project. A PDF version can be downloaded from the PHE Toolkit. PHE Champion profiles highlight people working on the ground to improve health and conservation in areas where biodiversity is critically endangered.
Photo Credit: Building along the road in Kokolopuri village serves as a messsage drum for sending messages from one village to the next, courtesy of Ingrid Schulze and the BALANCED Project.
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