Help hundreds of women in the Philippines by empowering 30 Community Heath Advocates over one year.
Why we care: In the Philippines, 11 women die everyday due to preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. To help decrease this number, we trained 30 Community Health Advocates, but these women often feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities.
How we’re solving this: By providing support, training, and other benefits to our wonderful group of 30 Community Health Advocates who in turn help hundreds of women and families in Palawan, Philippines.
Leny is 26 years old but finished only two years of high school. Through the Roots of Health program, she has become a rock star health advocate in her community of Magsasaka, providing services to her neighbors and finding new talents within herself. She deserves our continued support.
We meet with our Community Health Advocates two to four times per month to discuss community health issues and organize activities. Their role is instrumental, as they notify us when someone is pregnant and help us contact individuals who need our help. They distribute condoms and contraceptive pills to their neighbors and let us know when women are due for contraceptive injections. In turn, we pay our Community Health Advocates a token salary for their efforts and give them cell phones so that they can always get in touch with us if needed.
With your support, we can expand their skills and responsibilities. We’ve given our Community Health Advocates tools like blood pressure apparatuses and held a training session to teach them how to monitor other vital signs. However, these skills take time to learn, and ongoing practice and training is imperative to their work. Our goal is to further train the Community Health Advocates to work out ages of gestation and probable due dates, identify risk factors in pregnancy, and make birth plans with clients.
We bring our 30 Community Health Advocates together three or four times a year for briefing sessions and see first-hand how happy they are to meet each other, women facing similar challenges. These sessions make them feel valued and special. Help us give these dedicated women, like Leny, a much needed confidence boost by knowing they have our continued support!