Stop Human Trafficking, Rescue, Educate & Empower

Population health is essential to national economic growth, and individual health is a social determinant to economic improvement. Further, the health sector in Nepal is one of the few sectors that offers employment opportunities for the rural poor, through its CMA program. Nepal’s Community Medicine Assistants (CMAs) are trained to work in the rural communities to provide health promotion, education and support. The CMAs, once selected through the application process, complete 18 months training to provide basic services in nutrition, environmental practices, and maternal and child health to households located far from health posts or health centers. CMAs sensitize women and families on the importance of seeking ante-natal and pre-natal services at the closest facilities, how to best protect the their own health and that of their infants and children, and how to recognize problem signs and symptoms to seek care immediately. CMAs also receive training in midwifery care to be able to attend to births when a mother cannot reach a facility on time.
Close to the community providers, such as CMAs, have been shown to expand the reach of primary health services and improve population health.This lowest level of institutionalized provider, employed by the Nepali national government not only provides a public good to the community but provides an employment opportunity for the rural poor. Moreover, it provides an opportunity for young women. Focusing on the villages in the Gorkha district, location of the epicenter of Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, the Journey Home Foundation will expand its training programs to train 6 young women, who qualify for the course, to receive their CMA certification.
The CMA training was only authorized through Nepal’s Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT). Due to the consistent quality training provided by JHF, and the success of JHF’s approach, Now JHF has added the CMA training to its training offerings for women and girls. With the help of the village communities, six students have fit the criteria and their applications have been accepted for the JHF first CMA training. 

Links:

• http://www.facebook.com/journeyhomefoundation
• http://www.journeyhomefoundation.org

We started our new program for training midwifery on July 9th. This project trains 6 girls, who are from the remote villages of Gorkha, Nepal. These girls were at risk for being victums of human trafficking because after the massive earthquake, they had no home nor income. This program will give the girls a steady job that will greatly lower the risk of them becoming victums of human trafficking.

This training course will help them in the sector of community health in their respective villages where health and sanitation is relatively poor. This will help their communities to bring about positive changes regarding health and sanitation.

These young girls always wanted to become Community Medical Assistants, but they never imagined becoming one. When they heard JHF was looking for motivated young girls to train to become Community Medical Assistant/midwifery, they were so excited.

This is the first time a program like this has ever been done in this area. In this area, there are no doctors, nurses, or midwives currently. Our project will hopefully make the area safer and have less miscarriages and problems during birth.

Once they complete the program, these girls will be going back to their villages and they will train another group of people so that the knowledge can spread.

Currently, lots of women in the remote areas of Nepal have their births in unsafe conditions and without people with medical training. Because of this, there can be a hgih mortatily rate for both for newborns and mothers. While the mortality rate has gone down in recent years, it is still much higher than we would like and our program aims to lower it even more.

Your support is greatly appreciated.