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It Takes Some Effort to Change Situations for the Better

Source:Humana People to People ChinaDate:2016-11-15 00:00:00Click:783
CD Butuo is a one year Community Development program, funded by the New Zealand Aid Programme’s “China Development Project Fund”, administrated through the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing.

 

The project started on the 1st of May 2015 and will run until the 31st of October 2016.The program aims to improve the health of 100 children through improvement of nutrition and sanitation through a community effort. The project engages the villagers in vegetable planting and breeding of chickens, furthermore training them on child development, nutrition, sanitation, hygiene and environmental protection. The project focuses on building the capacity of the community.


Project manager Ren Rong tells about her experiences from running the project. “ My name is Ren Rong I started working with this project on the 1st of May this year 2016. My greatest challenge was trying to mobilize the community for different trainings. At the beginning attendance in trainings was so disappointing. Many villagers did not attend the meetings except for those who had received something from the project such as chickens and vegetable seeds. I was very concerned and started asking those who did not attend what the problem was. They all had the same response: ‘Why should we attend since we don’t get anything from the project, what is so important in attending those meetings? I understood their grievances and why they were thinking like that, but this didn’t pull me down. I mobilized them to attend one meeting where I addressed all of them and explained the criteria we had used to select and give some households chickens and seeds while others didn’t get anything. It was not that we liked the selected families more than others, but we looked at their situation in terms of income and food security, we also looked at the health-status of these families. Everyone understood and they showed remorse for their actions. From that day many people started attending and participating in either trainings or cleaning actions we carried out in the villages.”


What changes has Ren Rong seen in the community she is working in?


“As a project we gave chicken to the families and we made a follow-up,training them in how to take good care of the chicken. I am happy to say the chickens are laying many eggs and I see most families’ nutrition has improved for the better. We still need to train the families on having a proper timetable for feeding the chickens.The chickens are giving many eggs and some families sell the extra eggs while others haven’t organized what to do with the eggs they can’t consume themselves. We will help these families to find ways to sell their eggs, at the same time we plan to train the families to use a variety of cooking ways to make the eggs more delicious instead of eating eggs cooked in the same way everyday. We have helped the families also in planting vegetables. Now each household has a small patch with vegetables. We also introduced quinoa which is a new food crop in Butuo. We hope the quinoa will grow well, so that families can use it as supplementary food. Due to the trainings and cleaning actions we carried out in the village the families have adopted new habits of cleaning their homes and surroundings. Now it is more common to see people dressed in newly washed clothes. Some who have toilets also practice hygiene because they now understand that they should clean their hands after using the toilet and understand that they should not defecate somewhere in the open. Children’s growing environment has improved and also their nutrition status, now we can see more healthy children playing in a clean environment. “

Each household has a small patch for planting vegetables

Meetings are held to discuss different issues

Quinoa, introduced for the first time in Butuo

This project is funded by New Zealand Aid Programme (www.aid.govt.nz). Content in this article reflects the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the funder.


 

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