NYAMAGABE MISSION BY WORLD MISSION FRONTIERS

Nyamagabe District formerly known as Gikongoro, is located in the Southern province of the Country, it very mountainous and made up of 17 sectors.

World Mission Frontiers began operating in Nyamagabe in 2011 with the support from the Global Fund meeting our dream of doing charitable services especially to vulnerable people.

Particularly in Nyamagabe our target was to help the people both infected and affect by HIV/AIDS, our purpose here was to uplift their standards and help them regain hope since most of them think that once you contract HIV/AIDS the next thing is to get sick and die.  In that way they lose hope shortly and die leaving very many things crumbled.

The HIV/AIDS infected face a couple of challenges include being stigmatized by the community they live in, living a hopeless life, lack of basing needs to support them in their everyday lives, weak most of the time since the bodies are weak, they are not to work hard in order to earn a living, and many other challenges including separation and divorce of couple due to self-accusations of who could have been the trouble causer, children who are infected also and many more others. People who are in this situation, loose hope completely that once they are not helped, they can even commit suicide hoping to run away from the shame and scorn from the community.

Therefore when we went to work in Nyamagabe purpose we wanted to deal with the above mentioned issues and also encourage the affected to be of so much help to the infected ones.  Not to stigmatize them, to keep encouraging them that there¡¯s hope to live longer if they follows the prescriptions given by doctors and counselors, if they take the medicine well and if they can abstain from unprotected sex and many other things that are important in life.

At Nyamagabe WMF worked in for four sectors: Uwinkingi, Musebeya, Mushubi and Nkomane. Each sector has maximum 6 cells and more. From each cell we identified the beneficiaries of the project and 20 people would be selected and these involved both the infected and the affected.  That means we would select 60 beneficiaries from three cells of one sector and therefore 120 beneficiaries from four Sectors.

With the support from the Global Fund through the Ministry of health in the Unit of single project implementation unit, WMF was able to implement the project through single stream funding in the four sectors and it was very successful since it benefited the beneficiaries very much

• We identified beneficiaries of the project both the infected and the affected HIV/AIDS

• We organized them into groups of 20 to form a cooperative

• We put a committee of each group

• We trained all the committees in leadership skills, how to work in cooperatives and their importance, we also trained in starting small income generating activities and how to manage them

• We also did a training on behavioral change especially in order to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS

• We did a training of community health workers. Community health workers are trained people and concerned with giving first aid to the people in community before they can go for further treatment. They inform the community on the ongoing health programs, they are community counselors basically.  We trained them to trains others, we gave them materials to use, we would financially support them in order to facilitate them carry out their activities. They carried out what we called the door to door campaign on male circumcision, this is so much encouraged since it is scientifically proven as one way of reducing the spread of AIDS, this campaign was carried out and thousands of families were reached. This helped the males to know more about male circumcision since they didn¡¯t have a hit about it before.

• We campaigned for behavioral change in secondary and Primary school and carried out volunteer testing and counseling among students which helped them to know their status especially with this rampant spread of HIV/AIDS especially among the youth

Startup capital

This was provided to the beneficiaries of the project in order to implement the projects agreed upon.  The first phase of the project implementation, we supported the beneficiaries in two ways:

1. We gave the financial support to buy cows that they will raise together as a cooperative 36 cows were given out in the first phase

2. We built kraals for keeping cows indoor. Twelve kraals were built in the first phase

3. We provided materials to help them take care of the cows like Medicine , salt, sprays and some food to feed the cows internally

In the second phase we also gave them 36 more cows and built 12 kraals as well plus all those other materials mentioned above. The total of cows is summed up to 72 Friesian cows and 302 pigs, the most interesting thing here is that the lives of the beneficiaries have completely changed to better. We appreciate the efforts of every one who invested a lot to make sure that the lives of people change to better