Baby Milk Project
Partner | IBVM Community of Southern Africa
Location | Lukulu, Zambia
Overview
The Baby Milk program provides milk and nutrition support to orphaned and undernourished babies in the impoverished district of Lukulu, in remote Zambia.
The program was initiated in 2006 when a Zambian medical superintendent at the local hospital requested assistance from the Loreto Sisters to help save the lives of four orphaned babies. Since the program’s inception, the lives of hundreds of babies have been saved by the provision of milk formula and nutrition.
Only babies of those mothers who cannot breastfeed for a medical reason or who have insufficient breast milk to provide adequate nutrition for the baby are admitted into the program.
Challenges
The people of Lukulu, Zambia, suffer great deprivations in comparison to the rest of the country. The population is currently around 96,000, and the poverty level stands at 98%. This remote region can only be accessed via a long and poorly maintained dirt road.
An ongoing challenge faced by the program is the rising cost of milk, and with the present global economic situation as it is, this is likely to continue. The Loreto Sisters are trying to counteract this problem by securing donors and keeping some reserve funds to ensure an adequate milk supply, even if costly. Babies in need require milk no matter the cost and cannot wait indefinitely for funds to be secured.
Impact
The project succeeds in providing essential nutritional support in the form of formula milk or high energy protein supplements to hundreds of vulnerable and orphaned babies. With 17% of the Zambian population HIV positive, many babies are orphaned or unable to be breastfed by their mothers after the age of 6-months due to the risk of mother-to-child transmission.
Activities
The program operates from the Sancta Maria Mission and two rural health centres located across the Lukulu district.
At the Mission, two volunteers distribute milk regularly each week to those enrolled in the program. The babies and their carers attend and receive milk each week or fortnight, and their progress is monitored. Once the baby is growing well and thriving, usually between 15-18 months, they may be discharged from the program.
Health education and training are also given to parents and guardians by program health workers at the distribution centre.
Vehicle support for the Integrated Health Care Support Program
Partner | IBVM Community of Southern Africa
Location | Lukulu, Zambia
Overview
This project provides critical transport for all aspects of the Integrated Health Care Support Program (IHCSP), which supports the impoverished communities across the districts of Lukulu and Mitete.
The vehicle primarily provides support to those in need through the home-based care (HBC) program, the Baby Milk program for vulnerable babies, and the HEPS program, which produces and distributes high energy protein supplements to those in need of nutritional support. The vehicle often carries nurses to the villages to review and distribute medicine allocations to the HBC clients. It is also used to collect testing reagents from the hospital for the HIV counselling and testing centre.
Increasingly, the vehicle is being used to transport highly vulnerable and marginalised patients for specialist orthopaedic treatment at the Chitokoloki Hospital, located in a neighbouring province, thereby providing access to life-changing treatment for people who may otherwise die.
This vehicle support ultimately works towards addressing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Well-being, within this remote and undeveloped area of Zambia.
Challenges
The districts of Lukulu and Mitete consist of many scattered rural village communities over vast expanses. Without transportation, these vulnerable communities are unable to get the medical treatment or support they need. Even those living in the township struggle to access the hospital which is approximately five kilometres from the town centre.
Impact
This project provides critical support to enable the ongoing activity of the IHCSP. In practical terms, this means that vulnerable and sick people from the districts of Lukulu and Mitete can access the local hospital, receive medicine, nutrition, and home-based care when needed.
Late last year, the vehicle was used to transport two critically ill patients from the local hospital to Chitokoloki Hospital for advanced emergency treatment when no Ministry of Health vehicles were available. Driving through the night in hazardous conditions, the lives of the two patients were saved thanks to the availability of the vehicle and the willingness of the driver and health staff.
Activities
- Transporting the sick to and from the local district hospital.
- Providing access to specialist treatment at the better-resourced Chitokoloki Hospital.
- Distributing PPE and COVID-19 prevention training to local communities.
- Transporting nurses, caregivers and medicines for home visits.
- Delivering milk formula to rural health centres for carers of vulnerable babies to access.
- Supporting some health programs to become self-sustainable through income-generation measures, such as selling and distributing soya beans and other local goods.
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Lukulu Teacher Training Program
Partner | IBVM Community of Southern Africa
Location | Lukulu, Zambia
Overview
This program provides nine young people from the Lukulu and Mitete districts of Zambia with access to certified teacher training. Each participant, selected by a panel of educational experts, is enrolled in a three-year diploma in primary education at the Mongu College of Education, a college affiliated with the University of Zambia.
A condition of receiving the teacher training is that, upon graduation, the teachers return to the district and teach voluntarily in a rural community school until the government employs them to teach at a school in the Western Province, the most impoverished region in Zambia.
Challenges
This teacher training program is critical to the future education of children in Lukulu.
Many schools in this area have been established by rural village communities and have no trained teachers. They are often run by a person whose only qualification is that they are literate. Most of the ‘teachers’ in these schools are voluntary until the government agrees to take over the school, only once it has proven viable.
As community schools are becoming fully incorporated into the government school system, more community schools are being initiated by communities desperate to educate their children.
Impact
This project offers teacher training to nine volunteer teachers from rural community schools in the Lukulu and Mitete Districts. Each of the nine participants receives three years of training to become a qualified primary school teacher and an opportunity to earn a living for themselves and their families.
These newly qualified teachers return to the district and teach voluntarily in a rural community school until the government employs them to teach at a school in the Western Province. This provides children attending these schools with a higher standard of education, as fully trained teachers are teaching them.
Activities
- Assisting local students to apply for a diploma course in primary education at the Mongu College of Education – affiliated with the University of Zambia.
- Providing financial support for nine students to complete a diploma course in primary education.
- Monitoring students’ progress and managing consequences should students not meet guidelines.
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Lunch Feeding Program
Partner | IBVM Community of Southern Africa
Location | Lukulu, Zambia
Overview
The Lunch Feeding Program provides daily nutritious meals to those students at St Columba’s Secondary School who come from impoverished homes. St Columba’s has 450 students, many of whom were orphaned at a young age or are classified as vulnerable.
The Lunch Feeding Program helps keep these students at school throughout the day and vastly improves their concentration levels, particularly in afternoon lessons. The program works towards addressing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger and Goal 4, Quality Education.
Challenges
For most students, this meal is their only food intake for the day because they have no other sources or support. Many of these children camp in shacks in the Lukulu township or travel from rural villages in the surrounding districts of Lukulu and Mitete, some of which are the most remote and least developed areas in Zambia.
Many students try to do odd jobs after school and over the weekend to pay rent and buy food. When unable to get these odd jobs, they come to school with empty stomachs, making it hard to concentrate during lessons. Some opt to stay out of school, and some may miss school for a week in pursuit of paid work to survive.
Impact
The program aims to keep children from this remote region safe and in school by providing nutritious and sufficient food, especially during the school term. By doing so, the program gives these children an opportunity to break the poverty cycle by providing them with a pathway to tertiary education.
Activities
The program is implemented by a team of three teachers together with a Loreto Sister and includes:
- Purchasing food for school kitchen staff to prepare nutritious lunch meals.
- Monitoring the academic progress of the program beneficiaries.
- Ongoing dialogue with grade teachers and the school administration to identify the most vulnerable students.
- Encouraging those students who can afford a small monthly fee to enrol in the program, thereby supplementing the budget. These are students who can afford to pay but find it difficult to go home for lunch due to the distance.
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Sancta Maria College of Nursing and Midwifery
Partner | IBVM Community of Southern Africa
Location | Lukulu, Zambia
Overview
In 2020 the Bishop of Mongu approached the Loreto Sisters to manage the construction and operations of a new nursing and midwifery college in the remote community of Lukulu, in the Western Province of Zambia.
The college is being developed on the site of the abandoned Sancta Maria Mission Hospital located in the centre of town. It will provide local young people with an opportunity for tertiary and professional training otherwise inaccessible to them in this remote and underdeveloped area of Zambia.
While the Loreto Sisters manage the college’s operations, the Zambian Government pay the salaries of all key personnel and fund a portion of the running costs. Additionally, the progress and standards of the content of the curriculum and instruction are monitored and evaluated by the General Nursing Council of Zambia.
Challenges
Without education, local youth are unable to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families. An environment of hopelessness perpetuates amongst young people. It manifests through significant dropout rates from school, teenage pregnancies, prostitution, alcohol and drug problems, and the confinement of young girls to village life with no apparent future.
Furthermore, the remote districts of Lukulu and Mitete do not have sufficient qualified nurses to adequately provide local health services. Additionally, a low retention rate presents an ongoing challenge for the region.
Impact
Having a nursing and midwifery college that recruits students predominantly from the local area with deep, established family connections and a familiarity with the adverse living conditions means that qualified nurses graduating from the college will be more inclined to stay and work in the region. Ultimately, this will result in more stable and skilled staff delivering quality health services in these marginalised areas of the country.
Priority recruitment is given to female students to ensure greater equality in terms of opportunities afforded to girls within the local community.
The college will also promote much-needed future economic development by creating a hub for health education and encouraging complementary business and health services to establish themselves in the region.
Activities
With the recent approval by Zambia’s Nursing & Midwifery Council and initial renovations of the old hospital buildings complete, the college finally opened its doors to its first intake of 60 students on 23 August 2021. The next crucial phase of works, which is well underway, comprises constructing accommodation for students and senior academic staff.
The college now has a new bus to transport students to and from their practical sessions at the local hospital, located five kilometres from the college.
The final phase of construction will commence in 2022 and will safeguard the long-term future of the college. Building on the works to date, it will ensure the college is fit-for-purpose through the construction of new classrooms and more extensive accommodation to cater to the increasing student numbers, with new intakes of up to 100 annually.
