The Dispensary gets REAL!!

It's early on Friday morning. About 5:30....and I am up and on the way!. On Wednesday we had a GREAT meeting up at Mbaka Oromo Primary School. the meeting was called a "barraza" and that is a community-wide meeeting. the purpose of the meeting was to get the whole community involved and to actually "take charge" of the dispensary project. We (William Kabbis the headmaster, Noel Shinali the community health development specialist and I)explained the
genssis of the project. We said that we knew that just nice classrooms and dedicated teachers and parents are not enough for the students to excel, they also need good health.
That and the interest of the Saint John Fisher Wegman School of Nursing interest in helping out at our project, voila...the idea for a dispensary. After doing our homework about the actual health needs of the community and wrking with Hilda Ayieko (Western Nyanza Community Health Director) we came up with a plan for a dispensary and some basic ideas for programs to teach health (malaria avoidance, typhoid avoidance, nutrition basics, pre and post natal care, etc) we were instructed turn the project over to the community. If the community didn't "own" the project in some way, it would not succeed. SO...the basrraza was held and stearing committee members from each of the nine clans in the area were chosen and we are off and running. We all walked up and surveyed the site and everyone look at the initial architectural drawings and all looks full steam ahead.

more soon....thanks for following!
jim/jemo