Priorities

Through CHAMA’s seven priority sectors: Health, Water, Education, Agriculture, Environment, Skills/Craft Trainings, and Critical Intervention, we provide medical assistance, seeds for rural farmers and initiatives, water, education, HIV/AIDS and environmental awareness and sponsorship programs. Through these sectors we are able to provide access to literacy, numeracy, food, water and clothing, all contributing to the growth of vibrant and sustainable communities in developing countries. When concern transitions to action, great possibilities are unleashed. We provide you with a brief description of the seven sectors:

HEALTH

Treatment and prevention of diseases long available in the developed nations has yet to reach the world in its entirety, keeping good health out of the reach of millions!

Through our critical intervention partner hospital centers, CHAMA focuses on helping indigenous people to improve community health and reduce needless malaria Tuberculosis, Leprosy and HIV/AIDS rate infection. By creating essential health services and providing access, we are ensuring that hundreds of needy children and seniours as well as community members are well nourished and protected from malaria infection and other diseases.

Through initiatives like This Child Must NOT Die CHAMA seeks to provide innovative and simple solutions to overcome malaria disease problems in the developing world.

This Child Must NOT Die gathers sponsors to assist with costs in order to provide free malaria healthcare to the indigenous people and organizations that care for and deliver feeding programs to the street and orphan children that we care for. Donate today to support our This Child Must Not Die Campaign through our secured PayPal account.

EDUCATION

There is a strong link between education and malaria. Malaria affects pre-school children mostly (75%) but the effect on education is high with the high number of school days lost because of malaria related illness. Malaria causes 1-6 million schooldays lost annually.

Without education we are creating the perfect conditions for malaria to flourish. The lack of education forms a critical barrier to preventing malaria. Throughout developing nations, primary education holds the key for children to grow into strong and healthy adults. Basic education provides the opportunity for children to become prosperous adults and leaders within their communities. These children will grow up to be role models and help their communities.

Many governments in the developing world are not able to provide consistent, quality education for their children. We focus our attention on two main areas within the education sector: School supplies and health education by:

• Providing school supplies for needy children;
• Empower children, through skill-based health education, to recognise the symptoms of malaria and seek appropriate treatment;
• Empower children, through skill-based health education, to use mosquito net; and
• Educating teachers on using presumptive treatment measures.

In identifying the best projects, we recognize the particular need to address the deficient educational support available for young girls. Given both the critical benefits of education for girls as well as the key role women play within their broader communities, we recommend projects that bring attention to girls’ education and seek to correct this gender inequality.

AGRICULTURE AND NUTRITION

According to naturopathy, the real causes of malaria are wrong feeding. The liberal intake of tinned and other denatured foods and alcoholic beverages lowers the vitality of the system and paves the way for the development of malaria. Lack of proper intake of nutritious meals lowers the immune system to fight the malaria scourge.

A vaccine is not on the immediate horizon. Drug-resistance to affordable anti-malarial drugs, such as chloroquine, is on the rise and while more effective anti-malarias are available, they come at a significantly higher cost. The poor are affected most as they have less access to services, information and protective measures, and less power to avoid living or working in malaria-affected areas.

Shortage of nutrition intake makes people more vulnerable to malaria attack. Since farming is the major source of livelihoods in rural African communities that we serve, the burden of malaria can be reduced significantly by introducing nutritious seeds to the local farmers, using irrigation from the water wells we provide. Through supporting agriculture and providing modern farming techniques trainings and fertilizers, families and communities identify and overcome the obstacles-malaria disease- that prevent them from living life in all its fullness and overcome poverty.

CHAMA partners with communities to improve their development. By helping community members help each other, CHAMA ensures that the process of positive change continues long after CHAMA volunteer and development staffs have left.

SKILLS AND CRAFT TRAININGS

Women have always been marginalized and relegated to the status of subjugated class in the African societies. Due to lack of specific implementation of plans, local communities especially women have remained outside the scope and benefits of government schemes and programmes.

In rural African communities taking care of children when they sick of malaria is the sole responsibility of mothers. Women are limited at home and end up doing unpaid care giving job without any source of income to provide for their sick children. Single mothers bear the brunt because there are no social assistance for women to help in child care. If their wards are fortunate to survive malaria, employment to fend for their future becomes another insurmountable barrier. This neglect results in abuse of women and youths, especially girls as they are forced to undergo various onerous cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM).

Women have not actively participated in their emancipation due to their lack of economic independence and illiteracy. There is a need to address the issue by raising the status of women if women will be able to provide for their children during malaria sickness, care for themselves and be able to say no to the injustices against them. The key lies in women empowerment through economic self-sufficiency such skills or craft training. Women should be organized and strengthened at the grass root level to end their subordination through skill acquisition.

The main aim of this training is to enhance the quality of life of women through increased knowledge and skills. The women need vocational training or skills also to uplift their status. They should be able to stand on their feet and provide for their families and support their husband’s income and be able to provide malaria medication for their children. CHAMA partners with rural local churches and community organizations in providing stitching and tailoring skills to single mothers, girls and youths who may not have the means to further their education. Besides helping women, this will also reduce the wanton violence and youth restiveness that have plagued most African communities because of unemployment.

After successful completion of the skill acquisition, CHAMA will be empowering each person with one sewing machine and sample clothing materials to start their own business. Our partner churches and community organizations sponsor them with a free office space to start their own tailoring business. CHAMA organizes a graduation ceremony for them during which other women are encouraged to be become an agent of change for themselves and to discourage onerous cultural practices suhc as FGM.

ENVIRONMENT

The effectiveness of malaria control measures depends not only on the potency of the control measures themselves but also upon the influence of variables associated with the environment. Environmental variables have the capacity either to enhance or to impair the desired outcome. Healthy environment where mosquitoes cannot breed is the first step of preventing malaria disease.

High morbidity and mortality rates in Africa, prompted by malaria, cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery and typhoid, all sanitation-related diseases, are all consequences of poor sanitation and unfriendly environmental hygiene practice. Children under five are the most vulnerable to the effects of poor sanitation and hygiene in Africa. It is estimated that that nearly 200,000 children under five years die annually due to diarrhoea while respiratory infections kill another 240,000 young children every year.

The most worrisome of all the unsanitary practices is the high rate of open defecation practice in African nations. In 2011, UNICEF estimates that about 33 million Nigerians defecate in the open, depositing about 1.7m tonnes of faeces into the environment annually.

There are very few latrines—one per approximately 300 people. According to experts, malaria and diarrhea prevalence will drop significantly if families are provided with latrines and with adequate environmental and sanitation practices.

In partnership with local hospitals and churches, CHAMA focuses on reducing death and diseases caused by poor sanitation, unsafe hygiene practices and vector-borne diseases such as malaria. In every community where it works, CHAMA strives to improve access to safe water and proper sanitation seminars, facilities and ensures that its beneficiaries understand the importance of practicing proper hygiene and having safe water sources.

Donate today or volunteer with CHAMA to build latrines and sanitation facilities in rural African communities to stop the needless deaths.

CRITICAL INTERVENTION

Our world is plagued by many forms of injustice and natural disasters. CHAMA joins other humanitarian organizations to bring succor to these victims. It is time to respond to the millions of helpless children who die needlessly, exploited and abandoned.

Many of the families and our partners we serve are so economically poor. Their lives are endangered and they need critical intervention. Many poor families watch their children die needlessly of malaria and other preventable and poverty related diseases. Therefore, when CHAMA receives such SOS letters that require critical intervention, it strives to refer such cases to our nearest partner hospitals and take up their medical bills pay the medical bills. CHAMA also provide these children with in life saving relief programs such as feeding, clothing, shoes and child sponsorship as the starting point of an integrated strategy. We are currently on a campaign to raise enough capital to provide free malaria treatment and achieve one million meals per year and insure that one hundred thousand children receive the critical nutrition that they require for abundant life.