Preventing Infectious Diseases

For the past several months, my grant team and I have been working on a BIG project.

Currently, we don't have sinks at the school or the medical center. This a problem, right? Right. But, it turns out, it's not the root problem.

At a grant-writing conference my partner and I were trained to ask, "Why?" until we reached the problem root. We started with our identified issue:

There are not sinks for hand washing at the school or the medical center.

So, why aren't there sinks at the school and at the medical center? It's not a priority.

Why isn't it a priority? There is a lack of education.

There you have it: The community of Scorțeni had a lack of education regarding methods for the prevention of infectious illnesses. We set to work educating as many members of the community as possible.

At the school, we had an information session with all of the teachers and staff. We talked about methods for preventing infectious illness and focused on the first line of defense: hand washing.

The teachers in turn educated students.

The students (the kids in my health club), in turn, educated younger students through a puppet show and a song.

We wanted to be sure that what students were learning at school would be reinforced and practiced at home, so we also did an education session with parents.

And we didn't just want the parents to be educated, but as many people as possible in our community, so we did education sessions at the medical center for both the medical staff and for as many patients as possible.

We also plan to do some education at the mayor's office and at the church for other community members, but haven't gotten there yet.

Once community members were educated about the importance of hand washing and it became a priority, we asked them to help us with our goal of installing sinks at the school and medical center with financial donations.

Teachers at school and nurses at the medical center each donated 50 lei (about $4.50) to the cause. (A little perspective: The average Moldovan teacher makes around 22oo lei per month and the average Moldovan nurse makes about 14 lei an hour.)

Kids at the school had a penny war.

The winning class had a "Night at the Cinema."

In total, the students raised 3701 lei (about $340).

We also placed donation jars at the mayor's office and at the medical center, wrote donation request letters to some local businesses, and asked for individual donations from community members.

We were able to raise around 9,000 lei in the community. YAY!

With fingers and toes crossed, we presented our project to a group at the Peace Corps in hopes of winning a Small Projects Assistance grant.

WE WERE FUNDED in the amount of $2,440!

If you have not already seen it on Facebook, here is a little video that we put together for our grant presentation:

By September 1, 2011 look for some pictures of sinks and lots and lots of pictures people washing their hands.

By the end of the first semester of 2011, I hope to be reporting a 25% decrease in the number of people addressing the doctor with preventable diseases and a 25% reduction in the number of students missing school due to illness.

YAY PROGRESS!!! : )