Concern Blogs

By Jenn Weiss, Health Advisor, Concern US

Concern’s Community Animators review counseling cards that we will use to teach mothers healthy behaviors. Photo: Niger, Concern Worldwide

This summer, I traveled from the Concern US office in New York City to Tahoua, Niger, leaving the heat of the city behind and arriving to much hotter weather (130 degrees!) on the dusty and barren edge of the Sahel.  In the Tahoua region, which is about 400 kilometers north of Niamey, Niger’s capital, Concern is in the second year of its child survival programs.

Over the last decade, these programs, funded by USAID have been recognized for their impact, improving maternal and child health in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Burundi and Haiti through low-cost, community-based solutions.

Concern Niger’s Lahiya Yara (‘Life of a Child’) program aims to reach approximately 300,000 mothers and children under five years old with proven life-saving interventions to address diarrheal disease, malaria, pneumonia, and malnutrition by strengthening the health system, and by investing in intensive community-level activities to promote sustained behavior change. Read the rest of this entry »

Mzee Barosha on his farm with curious children, many of whom are his grand children, Kasulu. Photo: Isla Gilmore, Tanzania

By Isla Gilmore, Communications and Advocacy Officer, Tanzania

I have a soft spot for elderly people, so I was delighted to meet Mzee Bakari Barosha, a gentle 70-year-old farmer in Kasulu District, West Tanzania. We met him at the back of his little mud-brick house in Kigembe village, where he was tending to two baby goats that were born that day.

Mzee Barosha has never had much money. His 70 years have been spent cultivating crops to use for food for his family. He has always cultivated a small amount of beans that he would sell in order to buy essential items but he has never made much out of it. Because of this, it was impossible for his eight children to go any further than primary school.   Read the rest of this entry »