Capacity Building in Community Health Centers- Currently, we have trained three nurses in each of the three health centers in the Bugesera district (Shyara, Nzangwa, Nyamata).  Nurses were trained in primary health care, recognition and response to health emergencies, and promoting family planning and patient education. 
 

Volunteer Program for Health Professionals—HDI was founded by a group of young doctors seeking to work at the community level to help families without access to adequate or affordable basic health care.  Our organization seeks to provide young doctors both from local medical schools and international volunteers an opportunity to use our health centers as avenues to directly serve disadvantaged communities by providing health care services. 

Capacity Building among Community Health Workers and Traditional Birth Attendants- HDI is committed to training community health workers to ensure that they are continuously building their health education for major health challenges, such as malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS, hygiene and sanitation, family planning.  A primary goal of this training is to empower community health workers to be agents of change in their communities, to promote health seeking behavior. 

HDI has also started a program for training traditional birth attendants.  Our trainings formalize the health education of traditional birth attendants and ally HDI with the traditional birth attendants as intermediaries to the local community.  Trained traditional birth attendants serve as liaisons between health care centers and women in the community.  HDI trains the traditional birth attendants to disseminate knowledge of family planning and reproductive health and to advocate for women to go to health centers for reproductive counseling and safe deliveries

Innovative Methods for Health Education

Each of our three health centers is associated with a group of 15 local volunteers who have formed a theatrical group.  HDI trained these groups to discuss and write their own plays about different aspects of health education.  These plays are then performed in local communities as an innovative way of disseminating knowledge about reproductive health, family planning, hygiene and sanitation, malaria and AIDS prevention and sensitization, and nutrition. 

Health Education in Public Schools and Volunteer Networking

One of our main goals for the upcoming year is to start a partner program with student volunteers to teach health education in disadvantaged public schools.   We are currently preparing the curriculum on sexual health and reproductive health education (SHARE program), targeted for students in primary and secondary school. We hope that if information is conveyed to students before they are sexually active or already using alcohol or drugs, students will have a higher likelihood of retaining and implementing the information in their lifestyle choices.  Not only will this program benefit the youth who are taught in the public schools, it will hopefully also motivate the young people who have positive volunteering experiences to follow careers in public health and community health development.  Additionally, HDI has already trained 25 teachers in community health in Gatsibo district.