Improving Maternal-Infant Health for Mayan Women

Recently, Pueblo a Pueblo launched our new “Family Planning Champions” program, or Campeones de Planificacion Familiar, in which twenty women from our Maternal and Child Health program signed up to be trained as family planning mentors to other women in the community. This past week, our Campeones successfully completed their final training session and are now looking forward to their new roles as peer mentors, spreading the word about effective methods of family planning.

In preparation for their work with the program, the women were trained in numerous topics related to family planning and maternal health. These trainings included topics such as human reproductive anatomy, cervical cancer, methods of effective communication, and family planning strategies and religion.

Pueblo a Pueblo Program Assistant Vilma Mendoza, who trained the women for their roles as Campeones, is optimistic about the new program. She says that many of the women have expressed enthusiasm for their new roles and have attended trainings ready to learn about what they can do to positively impact their community.

“It is important to teach the entire municipality about the diversity of methods they can use if they want to plan their births,” she says. “So it is good that these women are really participating, and now they are going out into the community to transmit this information.”

In the weeks ahead, we hope to bring you more news about Campeones de Planificacion Familiar and what they are doing to impact the health of the women of Santiago.

The Maternal Child Health Program is starting  2013 by reaching more women in the communities in and around Santiago Atitlan than ever before! This year, we are adding a new component to our education outreach strategy.  In order to spread the importance of maternal and child health on a larger scale, we are selecting twenty mothers, dubbed our Family Planning Champions, within our sponsor program to become maternal & child health educators within the community. By appointing these women as community mentors, we can guarantee that the knowledge they continue to gain during Pueblo a Pueblo trainings can flourish and benefit other families beyond our doors.

The mothers we have selected to be our newest team of educators, our Family Planning Champions, have participated in our maternal health programs and trainings for at least three years, and have individually distinguished themselves for their strong participation in our trainings and their desire to be well educated on health related issues for themselves and their families. To prepare these women to become beneficial mentors in their communities, the Maternal Child Health program is preparing Family Planning Champion trainings based on effective peer to peer communication techniques, along with reviewing the importance of family planning and reproductive health issues.

Ultimately, our goal is to educate as many women and families as we can about the importance of maternal and child health. Knowledge is power, and thanks to the educational trainings our sponsored mothers have received, we can continue to spread women empowerment throughout Santiago Atitlan and beyond.

We are so excited to have our Maternal Child Health program progress and evolve, and we couldn’t be more thankful for our generous sponsors through GlobalGiving!

Links:

• http://www.puebloapueblo.org