Promote Healthy Communities in Kenya: CHW Program

Dear Partner,

You’ve probably heard us talk about distance before—but this quarter, you can really see what it means, and what it takes to overcome it.
In Tharaka, Kenya, where temperatures can reach 40°C and homes are scattered up to five kilometers apart, distance used to quietly decide who received health care—and who didn’t.

Millicent, a Community Health Promoter (CHP), lives this reality every day. Before, she could only reach a few households each week. The heat and the terrain meant that a child who missed an immunization, a pregnant mother who skipped a clinic visit, or a neighbor living with hypertension could easily fall through the cracks.

That started to change through a partnership with World Bicycle Relief, which provided 150 durable Buffalo Bicycles to CHPs across Tharaka Nithi County. Now, Millicent moves differently—and so does her work.

She’s following up on missed immunizations, supporting antenatal and postnatal care, and consistently checking in on people managing hypertension. She’s also showing up for young girls facing early pregnancies. One 16-year-old girl she supported shared: “She is the one who encouraged me to go to the clinic because I didn’t see the purpose, and she used to take me to the clinic using her bicycle.”

This quarter, HopeCore has trained 190 CHPs and given refresher training to an additional 70 CHPs—strengthening the quality of care during household visits. Using Starlink-powered digital classrooms, CHPs were able to learn in real time from wherever they were. In areas where connectivity has always been a barrier, this is a shift. It means faster learning, less time away from communities, and the ability to keep knowledge current without disrupting service delivery.

A 2024 evaluation by the Kenya Medical Research Institute of a digital health program in Busia County found that equipping CHPs with digital tools and real-time support increased malaria testing rates from 51% to 75%, while same-day diagnosis and treatment improved from 9% to 59%. At the global level, guidance from the World Health Organization continues to emphasize that well-trained and supported community health workers are essential to achieving universal health coverage.

You can see this playing out through the work CHPs are doing to address hypertension—the “silent killer”—in their communities. If you’d like a closer look, you can read more here: Silencing the Silent Killer: High Blood Pressure

The demand for training is growing, but we don’t yet have enough Starlink units to extend this model across all the areas that need it. To keep training CHPs efficiently and at scale, we need to expand the digital classroom setup.

Each Starlink unit costs $5,688, and we need 4 additional units to completely cover our service area and reduce healthcare barriers caused by distance.
More trained CHPs means stronger follow-up, earlier intervention, and more families receiving care before situations become critical. If you’re able to support this, you’d be helping us remove this distance barrier by scaling quality community healthcare.

We are so grateful for your heart for this community. We thank you for your continued support of our work and for being a part of the HopeCore family.

With sincere gratitude for your partnership,

Meriba Mwende
Partnerships and Fundraising Coordinator
Village HopeCore International