AMDA activities in Meiktila

Livelihood Improvement Program

The ‘Livelihood Improvement Program’ has been implemented since January 2002 with support from the participants in Japan’s Postal Savings for International Voluntary Aid, Rotary International District 2780, the Global Citizen Foundation, Dr. Ogoshi, Ms. Doden and donations from well wishers around the world. The program aims at improving the livelihood of marginalized women, and provides service package; micro credit, health education, trainings, health insurance and savings for 1,500 women at 36 target villages. Project staff members visit each target village twice a month and conduct the project activities.

The project disburses the small scale loan to beneficiaries, and most of them invested it for retail sales, agriculture and animal husbandry. To understand about retail sales investment in the context of micro credit is simple. No investment, no profit. By suitable profit from project loan, at least they can earn their daily meal expenses. As for agriculture, if they haven’t money to buy seeds or fertilizers, they have to search the money from other money lenders with high interest, mortgaged properties and also to be trusted by them. Now beneficiaries can easily buy the seeds or fertilizer by the project loan. As for livestock, if the beneficiaries breed a pig or goat etc, they can repay the loan installment by other incomes. After the loan cycle completed, they own a pig or goat or …etc and they can expand their business by this livestock. Providing various training opportunity such as pig breeding, agriculture and food processing could enhance the beneficiaries’ livelihood skill. As such, throughout the loan activity, beneficiaries improved their living status. They may be able to repair their houses or construct new ones, purchase the household materials & kitchen utensils, support the education for their children, and solve the health problems of their family members.

The health education session has been provided to all beneficiaries at bi-monthly regular meeting. While they attend the regular meeting to repay the loan installment, they study about basic health such as safe delivery. Health education is done by AMDA staff at first, and then the members conduct peer education by using group discussion, game or competition method. Some beneficiaries joined the project due to their interest in loan, but late they have become interested in health education and gradually changed their behaviors. For example, beneficiaries care their and their children’s personal hygiene, clean and tidy up their kitchen, house and compound, use the fly proof latrine. So, they can prevent themselves from diseases. If beneficiaries face any health problem, project provided the health insurance by collecting the fund of their own. So they are cured properly by health staff.

Success Story

I would like to share one beneficiary’s success story with you. She and her husband were casual workers.
Her family was very poor before joining this program. When the program was introduced at her village, she tried to join it to borrow money. However, other beneficiaries did not accept her as a member since they were afraid of taking her responsibility if she could not repay the loan installment. Project staff succeeded to facilitate and convince other beneficiaries, and she became a program member. Since then, she has worked hard, bred a pig with project loan, and repaid the loan installment by fetching and selling the water. Now, her business is getting profitable one by selling various items such as ropes for farming, and now she could own even a cow by herself. Other members trust her because of her spirit and hard-working.

Thanks to YOU

I am delightful to have an opportunity to utilize your supports for economically unprivleged beneficiaries. If we had no fund from you, we could not conduct this Program. If we had no support from you, I couldn’t see the benefits of our beneficiaries.

Our Program

Our Challenges

Our biggest challenge is to cope with dependency among local people.  They used to receive relief items freely from various aid agencies during the emergency period followed by the ban on poppy cultivation in 2002.  Even entering the recovery phase, their life is still hard, struggling to find and manage income sources other than poppy.  Our program focus is placed on health education, a core of MCN basic package, to be meant to bring a sustainable practice to improve their nutrition and health status.  Yet, it is an indirect intervention and a long-term solution while people tend to demand an immediate answer to their current problems.
Another challenge is related to the volunteer work undertaken by the community members.  It was a real challenge for both, volunteers and us, in the beginning since the concept of voluntarism had not been easily accepted by the community.
But through continuous effort by both, we all worked out to share the program goal.  At this juncture, I am very proud of being a part of AMDA Myanmar to successfully tap local resources to engage the program activities.  
Now, we are famous here not because of our big material distribution but because of great impacts on nutrition of mothers and children through our activities.

Yae Nar’s Story

Yae Nar is a poor pregnant woman from Wa Chu Kyine village, where MCN activity is in full swing. Among 10 pregnant women in the village, her family is the most vulnerable with their life day in day out.
“After delivering my first son, everybody was happy because I could give birth to a boy as the foremost son. But our happiness lasted just in a brief span and we lost him from our sight.  My first baby deceased at infancy due to malnutrition and lack of postnatal care.”  She recalled.
Now it’s her second pregnancy and she’s also one of the beneficiaries of MCN program.  Being perturbed with her past experience, she pays great attention to her health at pregnancy and discussed it with AMDA staff at every visit to her village.
She said, “I appreciate supplementary feeding program so much as substituting food whenever we have no rice to cook. You know my husband is a casual labor and we lead our life from hand to mouth.”  Then, she added, “I take micronutrient tablet everyday.  Thanks to AMDA’s support, I have the access to such kind of effective medicine that I never dreamed of before.”
“I’m also sparing some time to take rest since I have studied its necessity at the health education talks by MG members, Even though I can’t work now, I don’t worry anymore because supplementary feeding and health knowledge can make up our daily intake together with our local food and vegetables.”
By the time when this newsletter is published, Yae Nar will have given birth to a healthy baby.

My Dream

I have been working for AMDA Peru for almost four years and witnessed the different levels of progress and achievement among our beneficiaries.  How much they obtained varies from person to person, and it always depends on their decision, i.e. whether they utilize what they learned or just let it go.  And that calls for my attention, because in my opinion, empowerment is not what we teach or bring to the beneficiaries, but the real empowerment is what the people do and how they change by using what they gained. Our role is to facilitate and encourage them.  Having evaluated the project of these years, one of my conclusions is that I have been empowered by the project, too.  In this regard, I would like to share with you my experiences in the project with a support from Ajinomoto Co., Ltd., a donor as well as a partner of the project.

Working for the project at the community level targeting the direct beneficiaries, we coordinate the activities with the Ajinomoto office in Lima, while we assist health promoters in their coordination with community leaders and government officers.  Through these experiences, I have acquired the managerial skills and knowledge of grass-roots projects, including how to better build the relationships among stakeholders.

Before joining AMDA, I had worked for different types of social projects in the provinces outside Lima as the needs, I had believed, existed in the remote areas.  But the work experience in AMDA allowed me to explore widely and look into “lighthouse’s darkness.”  Yes, I found the enormous needs under the lighthouse, just one or two hours from the central Lima.  The situation was even worse than that in remote provinces. Often, the light or opportunities we miss even if they existed in front of you. You need to turn on a small lamp and see them clearly.

This year I had a chance to travel to Japan and delivered a speech at the 15th International Congress of Dietetics (ICD 2008) held in Yokohama.  I spoke on “Project for Community Empowerment on Nutrition and Maternal and Child Health” that we are working now with the support from Ajinomoto Co., Ltd.  That was a great opportunity at ICD as I was able to meet the people who work in the company, particularly those in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) department. 

It is not a “thank you paragraph.” All I write next can be easily proved by anyone who has a chance to work with the company and see how they are doing.  I was impressed by their strong commitment to the CSR policy.  I am not very much familiar with any other companies’ CSR policies in Japan, but from my long experience in Peru as a consultant, I could say that Ajinomoto is very different from other companies.  The main difference I feel is that their CSR’s objective is beyond public relations, corporate image, or environmental concerns.  It is integral part of their corporate culture focusing on development of the local people, which is not necessarily limited to food-related issues. When you talk with different people who are not from the CSR department, you can also see their involvement in these issues. Through this experience, I found that it was possible for a private company to be committed to CSR in a real sense and it depends on the motto or belief of each company.

While in Japan, I could also meet AMDA fellows and various professionals who work in similar projects in different countries. The exchange of ideas, cultures, realities, and experiences was a great opportunity for me to strengthen my capacity. I am sure that everyone in AMDA can review his/ her experiences and find their empowerment, like myself.