An article from the New York Times “Maternal Deaths Focus Harsh Light on Uganda” discusses how 340,000 women a year die from pregnancy related causes in Africa. The article focuses on poor healthcare and lack of access to health care, but I have to raise the question why doesn’t the article bring family-planning into the equation?

Another New York Times article “Seven Billion” asks the question that if we are challenged by supporting 7 billion people on the planet now—how will we support an additional 3 billion people by the end of this century? Author Joel E. Cohen points out that nearly 2/3 of sexually active women under 50 use birth control “which saves the lives of mothers who would otherwise die in childbirth.” He also suggests that smaller families allow families to focus on the well-being of their children.

Nicholas Kristof’s article “An African Adventure, and a Revelation” claims that only 23% of women in sub-Saharan Africa use contraceptives and that some women had never even heard of family planning.

In several hundred projects that I’ve watched our online students develop in the past two years, I’ve only seen three or four projects that address family planning, contraceptives or reproductive health.

An unwed teenage mother with her child in Ghana

One team of students—Genevieve Lamond (UK), Martha Njoroge (Kenya), Kathy Tate-Bradish (US)—are collaborating on a project in Kenya, with a key component on promoting the use of condoms—but it is related more to a central theme of their project—the prevention of the spread of AIDS—than in family-planning. This group definitely deserves strong accolades for tackling this sensitive and complex challenge.

Why is this? Why aren’t more development groups working on projects related to such incredibly important issues as family-planning—when a lack of it reduces family prosperity, access to education, food security, maternal and infant health—and maternal deaths? How can we raise interest in family planning?

What are your thoughts?

To learn about student projects in real time, please visit our Facebook Page or CSDi Development Community to see their postings.

In a series of Community-Based Adaptation courses, students spend several months collaborating with a community in designing a project, seeking funding and launching the project. A few months is a long time when a community is suffering; but then, development is a slow process.

George Okol of Uganda and partners Apurvaa VS (India), Paula Diaz (Colombia), and Willy Alangui (Philippines) (Team Uganda) collaborated with two villages in Uganda in September and George facilitated a participatory needs assessment with community members.

Community Health Challenges
	High on the list of challenges that community members identified were health problems—including malaria: “High, rampant and frequent incidents of malaria, diarrhea, cough, other diseases – a common cause of death among children.” Opposite: A woman happily washing her feet within the village water source not aware of the cosequences.

Over the next few weeks Team Uganda began the development of their project which ultimately included the following health and hygiene program. Please note the two malaria activities:
[Health and Hygiene Program] [Solution to underlying causes: Lack of knowledge of health and hygiene and sanitation]:
[Activity 1] Health and Hygiene Marketing and outreach programs and workshops to schools, families and communities and follow-up
[Activity 2] Hand washing workshop and follow-up
[Activity 3] Kitchen Hygiene and food storage workshop and follow-up
[Activity 4] Clearing and drying of mosquito breeding grounds workshop and & Follow-up (compounds, bushes, stagnant water, etc)
[Activity 5] Scale up actual use of Treated Nets and follow-up
[Activity 6] Point of use water purification workshop and follow-up

When the team returned just a month after the initial needs assessment to present a draft project proposal and get feedback from the community they had a terrible shock when they discovered that two more community members had died from malaria.

George: “I was however greeted by bad news involving one death in the last one month from each of the two villages as a result of malaria – one child of 8 months from Adoku village and one pregnant woman from Abilayep village. I was devastated to learn that these lives could have been saved if prevention and treatment was well handled. Nonetheless, it gave me more motivation to ensure that this project succeeds to benefit this community. They were concerned that they keep losing children and pregnant women frequently to malaria.”

In 2009 mosquitoes infected 225 million people worldwide with malaria—which killed 781,000 of those infected. Many solutions are simple. Standing water is where mosquito larvae live. It can be something as large as a lake or a pond, but it can also be something as small as a stagnant ditch or mud puddle—or even cans of water in a rubbish pile, or tires lying in a field.

Working with a community to begin a program of consciousness raising and policing breeding areas around the community and cleaning them up is a simple, easy-to-understand, no-cost activity to launch.

Low cost insecticide treated sleeping nets offer 70% protection compared to not using a net. Scientific studies show that the nets will reduce malarial episodes by 50%. The nets only cost three dollars on average.

So team Uganda is on the right track: it’s just a terrible shame that villages are continuing to die when the project is still only in a preliminary design stage.

We maintain a database of field projects designed by students and make them available to new, incoming students—to both help speed up the design process and get evidence-based and sustainable development information into their hands.

Because many of the technologies that our students are working with (such as Team Uganda’s mosquito activities) are incredibly simple—it’s too bad that we can’t get this information more quickly into the hands of a greater number of people on the ground who can use it today.

Good job team Uganda –and keep it up! Read their report from the field complete with some great photographs:

To learn about student projects in real time, please visit our Facebook Page or CSDi Development Community to see their postings.

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Cross hemisphere partnerships are creating between 40 & 50 projects on-the-ground community projects in our fall online courses.

	Students are from Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean & the Pacific. See the list of countries below. They are posting updates on CSDi’s Facebook page & Development Community pages.
	Students develop participatory needs assessments with community members using a 10-seed voting system—and participatory mapping.
	Check in periodically—students will be asking for help with their projects—but also posting suggestions for other students.
	Projects are ranging model forests, sustainable tourism, wetland conservation, land use management plans, soil & water restoration & management, alternative forms of income generation, deforestation, advocacy, youth, nomadic pastoralism, food insecurity & vulnerability to climate change.
	Based upon community defined need, students develop projects designed for impact and sustainability in partnership with their communities.

Here are the countries where this fall’s students come from:
Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria , Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Brasil, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Pakistan, Perú, Philippines, Reunion, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Somalia, South Sudan, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor Leste, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam, Zambia.

Tell us about your projects. What do you have to offer to these online students?

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Learn how to develop a community centered, impact oriented project.