In March 2015, the long awaited pilot project of CHCs in South Kivu, which is part of the Dfid funded SWIFT Project in DRC finally got started. Amans Ntakarutimana, Africa AHEAD’s Project Manager, has been working with the Tearfund team to get the project off the ground for over a year, since funding was first approved.
A two day Orientation Meeting was held with Ministry of Planning , BCZ and Tearfund staff to make sure all stakeholders were on the same page. The response from the local Provincial officials was very positive and they were quoted as saying that they would be delighted if this method could be used throughout South Kivu and Manyema as ‘your methodology is what we need’. At present the CHC model is only being used in peri urban areas so as not to confuse the existing government methodology of ‘Village Assaignee’ which is already established for rural areas.
A base line survey was conduced in 1,032 households out of a population of 3,300 households, and this will enable a comprehensive comparison of hygiene facilities before and after the training. This AA survey will complement the TearFund/ODI data base which has already been done throughout implementing areas. The CHC data will be available for all stakeholders on the monitoring website www.chcahead.org.
The Africa AHEAD Manual has been translated into French and is ready to be printed. The full tool kit is also ready to be used. Once the training materials and the membership cards have been printed, the project will be ready to start. The Training of Trainers for the 25 CHCs is now scheduled to be done in April.
SWIFT Consortium newsletter reports
Tearfund’s programme manager Nat Hollands met with Africa AHEADs Directors, Juliet and Anthony Waterkeyn in Kigali on Wednesday to discuss the implementation of Community Health Clubs (CHCs) in South Kivu, where a baseline survey specific to CHC activities is currently being conducted…..