Kara Watkins/ADRA International
Residents of Totogalpa, a small Nicaraguan farming community skirting the country's northern border with Honduras, plant tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini and other non-traditional crops. These days, the robust agricultural region is known for its high-quality produce, but it wasn't long ago that drastic climate swings left it desolate. Then an Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) project helped Totogalpan farmers overcome their dependence on locally grown grains by equipping them with the tools, training and resources to diversify their crops.
The project is one of many that fall under the United Nation's first Millennium Development Goal: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Initiated in 2002, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) challenge nations to achieve measurable improvement in alleviating poverty and other crucial humanitarian issues by the year 2015. From its beginnings in 1956, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has operated under the mission of giving humanitarian aid and development assistance to all those in need. Today, ADRA continues its mission, working alongside the worldwide humanitarian community to fulfill the MDGs.
ADRA is also active in working toward the UN's 7 other Millennium Development Goals.
Achieve universal primary education
ADRA has always emphasized education as the foundation for success, developing projects that provide both children and adults -- especially girls and women -- with the opportunity to attend school to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math, and perhaps a marketable job skill.
In Lima, ADRA Peru provides tuition for vocational training and psychological support to impoverished street kids ages 14 to 18 -- an often forgotten age group. Most teens in the program have had troubled childhoods. They now live in shelters with other teens who grew up on the streets or left home because of domestic or sexual abuse or other family problems.
Once finished with the nine to twelve month vocational courses, which include several months of practical training, the young people are equipped to find jobs or even open their own businesses. More importantly, they are prepared to embrace a more hopeful future.
Promote gender equality and empower women
ADRA Peru is promoting gender equality with a project to strengthen women's rights in the region of Ayacucho. The project works with local women in the region, educating them about their rights, building their capacity, and increasing their representation as decision-making citizens at all levels of society. In addition, the project supports civil society organizations and promotes women's economic participation.
Also in South America, female heads of household and women who have been displaced by civil war in Colombia are becoming empowered through vocational training and personal development classes provided by ADRA.
Women make up nearly half of Colombia's internationally displaced population, and ADRA Colombia has helped hundreds achieve financial independence by offering hands-on training in tailoring and cosmetology. The women also participate in health education, women's rights, and personal development classes designed to improve their quality of life and self-esteem.
Reduce child mortality
ADRA Cambodia is helping to reduce child mortality by creating "Child Friendly Villages." The multi-year project is improving the quality of health and reducing the morbidity and mortality of more than 22,500 women of reproductive age and more than 17,400 children under five in the Baray-Santuk district of the Kampong Thom province of Cambodia.
A village-level initiative, the project trains and empowers village leaders, volunteers, and traditional birth attendants, who then teach local women of child-bearing age about proper nutrition, birth spacing, breast-feeding, and pre-natal, labor and delivery, and post-natal care -- all important factors affecting infant and child health.
Addressing the most common health problems affecting village mothers and children, the project also ensures villagers have access to clean water and sanitation, provides education classes in health, hygiene, and sanitation, and coordinates community-based nutrition activities. In addition, women learn how to grow home gardens that improve household nutrition and provide a source of income, and attend literacy classes to help build knowledge and improve family livelihoods.
Improve maternal health
ADRA Nepal reports that one woman in Nepal dies every two hours due to preventable pregnancy-related causes. Contributing factors include inadequate health care facilities and trained health care staff, lack of equipment and pharmaceuticals, and cultural and geographical barriers.
In response, ADRA Nepal has launched the Safe Motherhood Innovation Project (SMIP). The SMIP project reduces maternal mortality and morbidity rates through training maternal health care staff, improving access and quality of maternal health services, increasing community awareness of Safe Motherhood issues, and establishing an active maternal health network.
Funded by the European Commission through ADRA Germany, the project will directly benefit nearly 270,000 women ages 15 to 49 living in Nepal's Eastern Development Region. The project will also directly benefit 3,610 female community health volunteers, 979 traditional birth attendants, and hundreds of other health care workers.
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
HIV/AIDS
Since 1985, ADRA has implemented successful HIV and AIDS projects that have reached more than 10 million people worldwide. In February 2004, ADRA's Training of Trainers (TOT) program began training hundreds of religious leaders, teachers, and healthcare workers in hospitals and schools to counsel people infected or affected by HIV. The TOT program has already reached more than 220,000 people directly and more than 1,000,000 indirectly.
The trainers provide counseling to community members on a continuous, voluntary basis. Along with offering HIV and AIDS awareness and education to reduce HIV infections, TOT participants provide counseling and support services that help improve the quality of life, increase access to medical care, empower, encourage social wellbeing, and preserve the rights of vulnerable groups in their communities, such as women and people living with AIDS.
Malaria
Almost six million cases of malaria are reported per year in Mozambique, where the disease is a major cause of death. Malaria also contributes to the high level of poverty throughout the southeastern African country by reducing productivity, especially in rural areas.
ADRA Mozambique is fighting malaria at the grassroots level with the Together Against Malaria (TAM) project. Funded through President Bush's Malaria Initiative by a grant worth nearly $2 million, TAM is an interfaith project that will reach more than 1.5 million Mozambicans.
"TAM represents an integral partnership between ADRA, the Inter-Religious Campaign, the Washington National Cathedral's Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, the Mozambique Ministry of Health, and the United States government," explains Darcy de Leon, country director for ADRA Mozambique.
The project is training more than 250 faith leaders from ten distinct religions to provide health education, train other individuals, and mobilize their unique faith communities to work together in fighting the spread of malaria.
Ensure environmental sustainability
ADRA's humanitarian and development efforts also take environmental sustainability into consideration. Natural resource management is a vital component of ADRA's initiatives to improve food source sustainability throughout the world.
With ADRA's help, communities learn to grow food with water-saving agricultural methods and irrigation systems, manage seedling nurseries, replant forests, build living fences, protect watersheds, and clear agricultural land responsibly. In the process, communities reestablish damaged environments, improve soil quality, grow diet-enriching fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and create stable, marketable sources of income.
ADRA also utilizes "green" technology, installing solar powered wells in Namibia and wind-powered wells in Somalia, both of which provide vulnerable communities with low-cost, reliable, environmentally friendly water supplies. Using innovative straw-bale technology, ADRA China has built hundreds of energy-efficient homes and schools.
Build a global partnership for development
Successfully meeting MDGs 1 through 7 hinges upon the partnership and accountability of rich and poor countries, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as ADRA. In every country where it works, ADRA's efforts are made more effective through its cooperative relationships with partner organizations and collaborations with a variety of government and NGO partners at all levels: community, regional, state and provincial, national, and international, including the United Nations.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) oversees the Millennium Development Goals and monitors their progress. More information about the MDGs can be found on the UNDP Web site at www.undp.org/mdg.
For more information about ADRA and its worldwide development activities, visit http://www.adra.org/.
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