Stomping Out Malaria in Africa

Uniting 3,000 Peace Corps Volunteers (6,000 stomps strong!) in 22 countries across Africa through efforts to end malaria. Visit us at stompoutmalaria.org for more information!

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Weekly Awesome Burkina Faso: Promoting Good Health Practices to a Low-Literate Audience

Since April 2012, PCV Clarissa has focused much of her work on researching mosquito net use in her community and educating the population about proper net use. Her village suffers from a low literacy rate. In order to overcome this obstacle, Clarissa created visual aids to be used as a survey tool. She constructed two boxes: one box with a picture of somebody sleeping under a mosquito net and one box with a picture of somebody sleeping without a mosquito net. Clarissa asks women to place a stone in either box depending on how they slept the night before. Then, Clarissa and her counterpart discuss malaria transmission, prevention techniques, and treatment strategies.

Read the full report here!

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Weekly Awesome Burkina Faso: Extending Malaria Education to Rural Populations

By working outside of his health clinic, Gerard and his counterpart have targeted a population that lacks access to information about important health issues. Their mission is to teach the community of how to they can protect themselves from malaria and to reduce the incidence of malaria overall in their community.

Read the entire report here!

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How to Make Neem cream to prevent Malaria

http://youtu.be/dhq_ZPQRMck

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Weekly Awesome Burkina Faso: Working with Women's Groups

McKenna Radunzel is an education volunteer living and working in a village in southwest Burkina Faso. McKenna works with a women’s association in her village. The association, consisting of 41 women, started to make mosquito repellent cream called neem cream.

Read the whole report here!

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Weekly Awesome Burkina Faso: Teaming up with a Village Midwife to Combat Malaria

Anna Callaghan is a community health development volunteer living in a village located in the eastern region of Burkina Faso. Upon arriving in her village, Anna started to learn about the community needs by utilizing a series of tools she learned in pre-service training (PST). After a couple months of assessing the needs of the community, she discovered that malaria was a major problem in her village.

Read what she did to combat malaria in her community here!

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PCV Michael Corcoran lives in a small village located in the Sourou valley of Burkina Faso. After attending malaria training with the president of his village COGES (the committee that serves as an intermediary between his local health clinic and the community), Michael and his counterpart decided to work together to develop a series of door to door mosquito net campaigns.

Read the full report here!

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Weekly Awesome Ghana: SWAT Regional Representative Training

From August 7-8, 2012, Ghana’s SWAT’m (Standing With Africa to Terminate Malaria) Team gathered in Kumasi for their SWAT Regional Rep Training. The training was a 2-day intensive workshop highlighting new materials and resources learned at the Stomp Out Malaria Boot Camp IV. 

Learn all about the training here.

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Weekly Awesome Ghana: STOMPED Workshop

On June 22, 2012, five health and agriculture volunteers kicked off the first Strategic Training of OMOA Malaria Peer EDucators (STOMPED) workshop in conjunction with the Organic Mango Outgrowers Association and Ghana Health Services. The 13 community representatives in attendance learned about the basic science of malaria, prevention and treatment, and how to properly hang and care for a mosquito net.

Find out about the planning, implementation, and follow of the workshop here.

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Weekly Awesome Ghana: Volunteer and Counterpart Spotlight - Alisa Langford and Osei Nkuah Jonas

Alisa Langford is a Peace Corps Volunteer located in the Western Region of Ghana. During the first few weeks at site, Alisa and her counterpart, Osei Nkuah Jonas did a lot of “house to house” education throughout their community. For four weeks, they went through the community twice a week inquiring whether the households were using the ITNs recently distributed by Ghana Health Service.

Read the whole report here! 

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Weekly Awesome Ghana: Neem Demonstrations by: Sonja Slavinski

"It’s the beginning of the rainy season in the northern regions of Ghana, and in the Upper East region, the mosquitoes are starting to breed and cases of malaria are becoming more prevalent. The bed net distribution happened a few months ago, but the population is still vulnerable to bites when the mosquitoes are most active. With the help and support of the two local clinics, the Sirigu Clinic and the Bugsongo Clinic, I’ve been doing neem cream demonstrations for mothers with babies ages 0-3."

Read the whole recount here! 

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Weekly Awesome Ghana: Working with Peer Educators

Sean Blaufuss is a Health Peace Corps Volunteer in Western Region, Ghana. For six months, he has been working the Sefwi Asawinso Secondary School’s Future Health Leaders Club. On July 18th, 2012, the club took their knowledge of malaria to Mighty Arms Preparatory School, a primary school. 

Read the full report here!

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Weekly Awesome Mozambique: Mocuba World Malaria Day Fair

For World Malaria Day 2012 (April 25th), PCV Tanya Riddle helped the local organization Osivela wa Yesu (“For the Love of Jesus” in local language) organize a community fair to educate the population about malaria and raise awareness of prevention strategies.

Click here to learn all about the event.

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Weekly Awesome Mozambique: PCVs work to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria co-infection

All Health PCVs in Mozambique are funded by PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), and work primarily in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Initiated in January 2012, Peace Corps/Mozambique malaria program aims to integrate malaria prevention activities into the HIV-focused activities that PCVs across the country are already do. The HIV/AIDS situation in Mozambique is precisely the reason that malaria activities must also continue to be scaled up: the dangerous effects of both diseases are only aggravated by each other.

Click here to learn about HIV/AIDS and malaria co-infection burden and what Peace Corps Volunteers are doing to combat it.

photo credit: photo credit: ILRI/Mann, Action for Global Health http://www.actionforglobalhealth.eu/blog/?p=928 

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Weekly Awesome Mozambique: JUNTOS: Youth Groups Educate the Community About Malaria

Jovens Unidos No Trabalho para Oportunidade e Sucesso—Youths United in the Work for Opportunity and Success is a co-ed club that uses different forms of communication to transmit information to students and communities. For a number of years, Peace Corps Volunteers have been working with JUNTOS groups to promote and share healthy practices through discussion, activities, and games. Recently, volunteers have focused their activities with a malaria and HIV/AIDS theme.

Click here to learn how Volunteers have collaborated with youth groups to promote malaria prevention.

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Weekly Awesome Mozambique: Malaria Activities with Neighborhood Kids

Peace Corps Volunteers don’t wait around for formal settings in which to work and educate kids about malaria! Mozambique PCVs take their messages to the playground, the classroom, or the street to capture a youth audience and teach them about malaria prevention in fun ways.

Find out what Volunteers in Mozambique are doing to reach the malaria message to youth here. 

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Weekly Awesome Mozambique: Training of Trainers in Zambezia Province

On Thursday July 5th, in Mocuba, Zambezia province, eight Peace Corps Health Volunteers, ten Mozambican counterparts, one representative from PIRCOM (Programa Inter-Religioso Contra a Malária), and one Peace Corps Staff member participated in a general malaria prevention “Training of Trainers.” The purpose of this workshop was two-fold: to propagate malaria prevention messages to the communities where participants live and to prepare PCVs and Mozambican counterparts to assist in the upcoming net distribution and spraying campaigns in the districts where they live and work.

Read more about the training here!

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Weekly Awesome Tanzania: Malaria Games

Malaria’s no fun but learning about it can be fun.  Several volunteers in Tanzania have adapted some popular children’s games to be malaria themed.  Classics like “Simon Says”, “Sharks and Minnows”, and “Zip, Zap, Zop” can be easily converted to energizers and learning games at girls’ conferences, environment/health club meetings, or in the classroom.

Learn about how PCVs are using fun games to teach children about malaria prevention!