Transforming 8 Communities in the Pamirs

It has been a busy quarter for the projects and for the team of supporters around the world. A former colleague, Caroline, walked hundreds of miles across the wilderness of the Highlands of Scotland to raise money for the wilderness of Tajikistan. She raised over £2,000 ($2,400)! And a visiting family to the Pamirs helped us to gain points on Global Giving with a photograph that was shortlisted for the annual competition.

In the field, the work with communities has been busy as well. The greenhouse project has had a visit from an evaluator who has carried out participatory research with our partners. This has given us areas for improvement but has also confirmed that this solution is rapidly moving toward making a sustainable change to the lives in the communities in which we work.

Continued monitoring of the greenhouses as well as carrying out continued training using the knowledge of local experts has literally born out amazing fruit. We have completed a greenhouse with what is one of the most isolated and marginalised communities in the region and we have delivered glass jars and preservation training that will allow communities to store vegetables for school children to enjoy this winter. Finally, we continue to refine and redesign the greenhouse to make it more affordable and accessible to more people.

The health project continues to tackle some of the root causes to poor child health by equipping hospital workers with knowledge on childhood illnesses and the with skills to become educators on these subjects to village women. Again we are using participatory tools in the hospital and in the villages to continually build community, reinforce accurate knowledge, as well as to evaluate our techniques and progress.

There have been a number of staff changes in our little office that have had some impact on the project work. The two international staff members working on the fruit project have sadly had to say goodbye to Tajikistan and return to their home countries. This has meant we will most likely have to suspend this project from the New Year. Nevertheless we are convinced that the work that was started will continue to have an impact far into the future. But at the same time we have been able to welcome a new international member of staff onto the health project. She joins a wonderfully committed, passionate and experienced team of local staff.

Thanks for your continued support. We look forward to sharing more stories with you as we come toward the end of the year. Please let us know if you would like to help us by raising awareness and/or funds toward this work over the festive period. Without the generous support of individuals, this work would stop overnight.

Work has begun in earnest over the last three months. Continued support of community initiatives has yielded much fruit - literally, in some cases.

Health Project

The health project continues to train and equip health workers to spread knowledge of good hygiene practices as part of their preventative approach to childhood illness. Here is one story from Madina:

Dilafruz has 3-children the youngest is her son who is studying in the secondary school in the 2nd grade. Once he came to the medpoint to see his mother’s lessons and he found it very interesting. After each lesson he asked his mother what she has been learning.

Dilafruz always shared information with her family. After one of the lessons about worms she explained to him about of types of worms and the ways of spreading them and showed him the pictures which she was drawing during the lesson to her notebook. Her son liked the information and started to draw some types of worms to his notebook too. Later he showed pictures to his friends at school. He explained how the worms can spread from one person to other. Before he had a habit of not to cut the nails and to wash the hands. Now Dilafruz hasn’t problem with cutting his nails and washing his hands with soap. He does this just by himself and reminds others to wash their hands.

As well as carrying out 28 lessons and activities with groups of women and health workers, the team have also assisted the health workers in carrying out educational celebration days in schools. World Children’s Day was on the 1^st June and we enabled over 160 children in five locations to take part – many for the first time.

High Altitude Agriculture

It has been a busy time for the greenhouse project too:

• Budget training is essential part for project partners. Calculating and understanding the general daily costs makes life easier for farmers. The first part of training was about how to create a budget (family budget, business budget and personal budget). On second session illustrated the basic financial knowledge and yearly expenses of green house. Creating a budget assisted each farmer to be aware of all of the expenditures (monthly, half year, yearly) and assisted in the prediction of their financial situation for betterment of life quality. 
• Canning training was improving skills of farmers. Getting knowledge in such a training with the experienced trainer improves confidence for preservation and also gives our partners’ communities experience/knowledge.
• We have also assisted in the moving of one of the greenhouses to a better location in the village to improve productivity for next year. Natural disasters like rockfalls brought challenges for the greenhouse at the school in the first years.
• We helped procure supplies for the construction of greenhouse at the furthest village of Shokhdara valley: Javshangoz village. We hope our new design will bring an opportunity for local farmers at an affordable price. The project started working at this village with the aim to improve nutrition and create the opportunity to grow vegetables which are impossible to grow outside.
• We are always trying to improve at Operation Mercy.  With a short-term volunteer, we were able to conduct interviews with our partners to improve our project.  We have asked both private and community partners and through his research, we will glean new information to develop ourselves and partners.