The Job

Bonjour à tous! Comment allez vous?

Hello everyone! How are you?

Today I wanted to share a bit about my work here in Benin. First, I think it's important that everyone knows I am a health volunteer here in Benin, so my job is based in health education. Officially my job sector is called Rural Community Health (RCH) for anyone that is interested in looking up further information. There are also agriculture and teaching volunteers in Benin. Now you are probably thinking, “What do I mean by health education?”. Let me give you a little bit of a run down on what it looks like to be a health volunteer serving in Benin.

First I need to give you some background information about the objectives developed by the Peace Corps that are my main focus during my service. There are 4 main objectives that focus on bettering the health of the communities here in Benin. They are…

1. Increase the knowledge and skills of women to adopt practices that contribute to a healthy pregnancy, safe delivery, good postpartum health, and a healthy newborn.

2. Increase the knowledge and skills of child caregivers to keep children under 5 healthy.

3. Increase the knowledge and skills of youth to improve their health and well-being through health and life skills education and linkages to youth-friendly services.

4. Improve community health workers skills to deliver health education and behavior change messages.

WOW! Now that we have covered all the official stuff, I can give you an idea of what my job looks like from my perspective. During my service, I will be focusing on bettering maternal health, child health and youth health by educating the population on proper health practices. For the last objective, you are probably wondering what a community health worker is. Well each of the communities have designated people from the community called “relais commentaries” (in French) that work to better the health of the community through health education. My job is to work with these community health workers and build their capacity so that our work can be sustainable for after I leave.

I just want to make a little shout out to my two counterparts because none of my work here would be possible without their hard work and support. I will definitely be giving them a proper introduction later, but I think its important to let all of you know that they are truly one of the best parts about my work here in Benin. So now you know a little bit about what the objectives are, let me explain how I am working on implementing activities in my community that focus on these goals.

The GAME PLAN… Over the next 3 months these are the things that I want to accomplish.

1. CARE GROUP!!! I want to start and have the first meeting for our Care Group. A care group is a group of about 10 people who attend a meeting once or twice a month to learn information about health practices. After this meeting those people share the information with 10 other people. By doing this, hopefully you will be educating 100 people for each meeting. Our focus will be to start a Care Group for leader mothers in the community who have children ages 0 to 5 years old.

2. Health Club at the high school! Friday will be the first meeting of the club and from then on the girls and boys will meet biweekly. I am hoping this gives girls and boys a safe place to learn and ask questions. I will definitely keep you all updated!

3. Last but not least, I will be focusing on working with my counterparts who are community health workers to build their capacity when giving health talks in the community.

Thats it!!! I hope this blog helps everyone to understand a little bit better of what my job is like here is Benin. If anyone has any questions feel free to let me know.

Merci beaucoup et bonne journée

Life Update:

1. Bena is getting bigger and my hair is getting longer

2. I went to my first voodoo fête and my first fish fête

3. I took a little work trip with some of the other volunteers to do a health talk on hand washing at a high school. Amazing experience!

4. Last but surely not least, my host Mama just had her second baby today. Its a boy!