When you lift up women, you lift up humanity Joan

I recently visited Big Life’s Community Health Program after two of our very kind foundation family members donated to it through our foundation, and I was blown away.

Big Life’s Annie Millar, who helps facilitate the program, took me to a Backpack Nurse Clinic being held in a rural village, roughly an hour’s drive away from the Chyulu Hills National Park. At the clinic, a nurse was providing antenatal care, vaccinations, and family planning services to women and their babies from the surrounding area.

Annie then introduced me to Joan, one of the two Big Life Community Health Program officers who support the nurses from the nine Ministry of Health clinics in the Greater Amboseli Ecosystem to run these Backpack Nurse Clinics so that they can provide these essential health services to people in the remote areas of the ecosystem.

Joan and her fellow program officer Joel also help to coordinate and train the team of 34 Community Health Volunteers who go door-to-door to follow up on children’s immunization schedules, refer malnourished children, expectant mothers and people with health concerns to their local nurse. They also talk openly with people about a variety of health and hygiene issues, including family planning and refer couples who would like to take up such a service to the nearest location that they can do so.

In addition to this, Joan and Joel facilitate 20 larger dialogue meetings a month, and here they are able to dispel myths about things like family planning and other health issues.

At the clinic, we sat and talked to some of the women outside. They told us that their husbands had only given them permission to attend the clinic with their babies for an hour or two before they were expected to return to their duties at home.

Then two community health volunteers came to talk to the ladies outside about family planning and the importance of child spacing for their health and their children’s health. As they were talking, I saw one of the young mothers looking down at her newborn baby with so much love in her eyes and nodding. My eyes started to fill with tears because I thought that without these clinics and the work of Joan, Joel, Annie and the volunteers, many of these women and children would not have access to antenatal care for their babies or contraception so that they can space their pregnancies. Health services to which they deserve access.

I left the clinic extremely moved by this team’s work. I was so impressed by them all, and in particular, Joan, who, in addition to the above duties, is also helping to create a school programme to train and incentivize teachers to create Child Rights Clubs so that children can discuss their sexual and reproductive rights.

On top of this, she was also suggesting at the clinic that they should do a few more dialogue sessions per month because she thought they were really helping change views, particularly the husband’s views, on lots of these issues.

She is completely inspiring, and to top it off; she was also recently the first female employee at Big Life in Kenya to get her motorbike licence. Despite it not being common for women to drive motorbikes in Kenya, Joan got her licence so that she would be able to get to all the places she needs to for her work, which are often far from tarmacked roads.

Joan is an incredible example of when you lift up women, you lift up humanity, and it was a real privilege to meet her, and the whole team.

Last year they helped to facilitate 8996 vaccinations, Family planning services for 4265 women, 6502 deworming treatments and distributed 12,000 condoms.

As I said, I’m blown away. They deserve huge congratulations and thank you so much to those of you who have supported this project already.

If you would like to support this program, you can do so through our foundation. 100% of your donation will go to the project you choose.

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