Pneumonia Outreach in Banda

Since I began work at Revelation Life, much of my work has been oriented around preparation for a massive community outreach about pneumonia, a focal activity of the grant we were awarded.  August 18th was the big day.  Aside from perhaps our wedding, I've never organized an event so large and complicated.

After numerous struggles with finding a venue suitable for our needs, this church building became the most beautiful building I had ever seen.  The congregation of the church was incredibly generous and pleasant to work with.

The Monitoring and Evaluation team (which I have trained over the last few months) did excellent work with registration, resulting in the collection of data that will be extremely useful to the organization going forward.  

The team also performed malnutrition screenings for children in order to identify families to invite to our nutrition program.

The outreach began with a viewing of a film which we created about how to construct a stove shelter and why indoor charcoal smoke is dangerous for children.  It was a joy to present a high quality film made in the local language, filmed in and created especially for this community.

Our Health Champions entertained and educated the crowd with a drama which depicted the functioning of the immune system and the importance of vaccines to protect against pneumonia and other killer diseases.  

And then the sky opened...

As is the case with many slums, Banda is located on some of the lowest, most flood-prone ground in our hilly city.  The church grounds were no exception.  The long downpour was enough to make most of our attendees scatter back to their homes, and we had to significantly curtail our planned activities.

It was a disappointing and soggy end to the day. We still reached over 100 families in Banda and the surrounding slums.  We are hopeful about the results we will see as we follow up with these families in the coming months and assist them with materials to build their own stove shelters at home.