6

Community Voices

INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY VOICES

This session was built around several videos captured across three programs in Ethiopia, Haiti, and Rwanda, and presented by Jocelyn Widmer, Program Director and Assistant Scholar for Online Degree Programs, University of Florida, and Charlee Alexander, Research Associate, Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally. In all three sites, issues were highlighted that addressed barriers to family and community investments in young children and families as well as the opportunities to do so. Many of the voices identify how investments in their lives and the programs serving them led to positive outcomes. The goal of the videos was to bring the end users of government and private investments into the room to share their stories. The methodology for framing the videos sought to highlight the integration across health, nutrition, education, and social protection in an effort to document the continuum from policy makers to the impacts on the ground. One of the main objectives of this session was to capture diverse perspectives. Widmer noted this was not difficult to do, given that perspectives of mothers of children with disabilities, single fathers, and faith leaders are ubiquitous across resource-challenged contexts.

PROJECT MERCY, ETHIOPIA

In rural Ethiopia, Project Mercy is a holistic community-development initiative providing access to, while at the same time investing in, health,

infrastructure, food security, and community development. Mothers and fathers reflected on the importance of education through the in-kind investments they make with their own time. The cyclical nature of community investments in young children was illustrated in the voice of one of the school’s graduates, Kidane Sarko, who was accepted to pursue a master’s degree in public health at a university in the United States.

Bete and Lale Demeke of Project Mercy stressed the importance of education in Project Mercy’s holistic approach to community development across four regions of Ethiopia. Under this education model, children are brought up through formal schooling that extends beyond providing basic lessons in reading and writing to include training in nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene, while also instilling a value system grounded in giving back to the community. The children who complete high school and pursue some form of higher education often return to Yetebon, committing their knowledge and skills in exchange for the support the community provided throughout their educational trajectories. Roughly 25 children are now back in the Yetebon area serving the community. Bete and Lale Demeke noted that if investments are made in children from an early age that encompass certain educational and community values, when the children return to the community to become part of the development structure there is greater acceptance by the community. Rather than development being driven by some outside entity, Project Mercy’s model brings its own children back into the fold.

RESTAVEK FREEDOM, HAITI

Restavek Freedom in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, works with partners such as policy implementers, public communication strategists, and faith leaders to address restavek—a form of child slavery endemic to Haiti that is pervasive across contemporary Haitian culture. Videos captured various community-based interventions targeting awareness across several types of messaging. Two former restaveks gave further dimension to the issue by explaining their own experiences with restavek metaphorically through different outlets they engage in to creatively express their past and also their hopes for the future.

Joan Conn, Executive Director of Restavek Freedom, highlighted the issue of restavek and some of the activities, partnerships, and government initiatives that are necessary to disseminate messages about the negative impacts of restavek on the children of Haiti. Conn underscored the importance of investing in the health of parents, because in Haiti, when a mother dies, unfortunately, her children are often time doomed to a life of child servitude. Restavek Freedom is working to change the cultural mindset of Haitians toward its children, and particularly nonbiological

children. Conn elaborated on one of Restavek Freedom’s current initiatives in partnership with Haiti’s Brigade for the Protection of Minors to develop a database to track children, because the Haitian government has no technological nor digital approach to monitoring child trafficking or child protection. In addition to tracking children, the database will also track perpetrators and aims to alleviate some of the corruption issues that lead to child protection cases being dismissed in Haiti’s judicial system.

PARTNERS IN HEALTH, RWANDA

In Rwanda, Faida Solanje, a mother caring for a child with developmental delays, offered her voice to describe the supportive environment that a pediatric development clinic implemented by the Rwinkwavu District Hospital, a government hospital in coordination with Partners In Health and funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund, provided. A social worker, nurse, and program manager also added their perspectives on the value of the pediatric development clinic and All Babies Count program to such mothers and their children throughout Rwinkwavu. The videos were framed by Fulgence Nkikabahizi, Medical Director of Rwinkwavu District Hospital, who discussed the scalability of both programs across health care facilities and the surrounding communities throughout Rwanda.

Christine Mutaganzwa, District Clinical Director for Kayonza, Rwanda, described in further detail the two programs presented in the video. The first, All Babies Count, targets the reduction of neonatal mortality in Rwanda. Mutaganzwa noted that neonatal mortality remains a significant challenge in Rwanda despite decreases in the under 5 mortality. Using existing platforms embedded in the communities, All Babies Count focuses on recruiting mothers and disseminating information and health care through visits, while also seeking to enroll these mothers in community-based programs to support their livelihoods. All Babies Count also targets the supportive environment surrounding a safe birth by mentoring midwives working in the district hospitals and ensuring community health workers who are in charge of maternal and child health know some of the warning signs for both babies and mothers. The second program Mutaganzwa elaborated on is the pediatric development clinic, which she noted is based on the reality that vulnerable babies are now surviving. This program aims to provide a structured system to follow children born preterm to ensure they have the health and nutritional support they need to reach their developmental potential.

REACTIONS TO COMMUNITY VOICES THROUGH
YOUNG LIVES ETHIOPIA PROJECT

Yisak Tafere, Lead Qualitative Researcher at Young Lives Ethiopia, framed his response to the community voices presented through the Young Lives project, a longitudinal study of 12,000 children across four countries, including Ethiopia. Bringing the wider community to the fore, Tafere highlighted child aspirations and dreams, stating that no matter what context children grow up in, they have aspirations. Tafere distinguished between aspirations and opportunity and how children are positioned to take advantage of the latter, given that broader national poverty is often a limiting factor for children being able to achieve their aspirations. Tafere warned that while the narratives in the videos presented during this session of the workshop are based on projects, rather than data, it is still an important outlet to capture children’s voices and their own expression of their lives. The voices collectively highlighted some of the necessary ingredients for systematic, holistic, and longitudinal studies of children’s lives through children themselves. Tafere questioned if we should start from research and apply the science to practice or move from practice to influence future research. In either case, Tafere encouraged smaller projects to provide mechanisms for scaling up.

YOUNG INFLUENCER POSTER SESSIONS

The Community Voices session during the workshop underscored the importance of young influencers and the role they play in family and community investments in young children, according to Alexander. The forum seeks to encourage the next generation of researchers, program implementers, and policy makers to participate in the workshops, and one vehicle by which this occurs is through interactive workshop sessions. Young Investigators were invited to present posters and provide a brief overview of their work relating to investments across health, nutrition, education, and social protection of young children during the workshop as a continuation of the session on community voices. Eleven Young Influencers presented their work across four countries as well as regionally. A list of participants and titles of their presentations is contained in Box 6-1.

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