Health Programs Trip
This fall, an Empower Tanzania team traveled to the Manyara region to support the launch of our newest health venture, the Improving Community Health Program, or ICHP.
As part of this program, members of communities around the Manyara region of Tanzania are selected as Community Health Workers, or CHWs, and trained extensively on health topics like nutrition, safe water and sanitation, menstrual periods, reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, healthy pregnancy, and vaccination. Representatives from households are then trained by CHWs, with 8 modules containing 32 hours of instruction.
The ICHP is part of a one-year study, which began with the training of CHWs, continues with the education of household representatives, and will conclude next year with in-home follow-up visits, to help us assess the impact of this training on communities. Overall, this program reaches over 33,000 households and an estimated 130,000 Tanzanians!
Based on what we have learned in previous health programs, we have worked with health experts and Tanzanian officials to develop a curriculum that we hope will be re-used in many other regions and communities in the future. We are excited to share that the feedback and data from our trip are both extremely promising!
Our travel group was a mix of North American volunteers and our Tanzania-based staff, who visited six wards around Babati Town Council: Nangara, Singe, Maisaka, Babati, Singino, and Bonga. In each ward, we were greeted warmly by program participants, and had a chance to award certificates to household representatives and hear from CHWs and representatives about the program’s progress.
The feedback has been, across the board, extremely positive. Parents, in particular, wanted students to receive a similar education through schools, including for sensitive topics like menstrual periods, puberty, sex education, and contraception for secondary school students.
We were also fortunate to speak to local and regional officials, including health authorities, who took time from their busy schedules to meet with Empower Tanzania about program implementation and results and share their support.
Participants, CHWs, local officials, and even religious leaders expressed their support for the program, and asked that it be extended and expanded to other regions!
After traveling to various wards, we held a meeting with CHWs and Health Implementers (HIs) to review program results. We were joined by Babati Town Council Medical Officer Msuya, who shared updates and statistics that will help us assess the impact of this ongoing program.
Through hard work and incredible commitment, teams of three (one CHW, two HIs) were able to visit every one of their 1,000 assigned households in just one month. Many made special follow-up visits to households that could not attend group training. Over 99% of household representatives had attended training, and over 80% had already completed the program, with the remaining 20% having many opportunities to do so before the program concludes.
Our Health Programs Director, Catherine Wales, is currently hard at work processing the pre-program and post-program surveys, over 135,000 entries, to ensure that we have the full story of this program’s effectiveness for the communities it serves.
One more round of surveys will be conducted in October of 2026 to measure the final impact of what has already been a very successful program!
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