Here we go!

Hello from Colorado!

This is my first blog post! It is amazing to share this exciting journey with all of the many people around the world who are supporting Little Feet-Big Sky! I hope that this blog will allow you to feel connected to this project. You can help keep this radio program on the air by making a contribution to the pay-pal link on this site. I am going to use this first blog post to provide a description of this project. Little Feet-Big Sky is a community health radio program that will reach rural areas of Rwanda, informing the residents of Village Cyanika and Ruhengeri about child health issues.

This project is being done in collaboration with multiple community partners. It would not have been possible without the vital partnership of Village Makeover, an NGO based out of Boulder, CO with offices in Kigali, Rwanda. Village Makeover has worked with community leaders in the Cyanika/Ruhengeri sectors for five years on health and sustainable development projects in rural Rwanda. The Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, based in Kigali, Rwanda, will be broadcasting LFBS on the university radio station. Frontline SMS: Medic is a team committed to supporting global health partners to strengthen health care delivery by providing mobile telephone technology. Their partnership will facilitate the creation of a "text-for-change" hotline to complement LFBS. This text-for-change hotline will sending text messages with information about HIV/AIDS to people living in the Cyanika/Ruhengeri sectors of Rwanda. You can learn more about Frontline SMS: Medic by visiting this website http://medic.frontlinesms.com/about/, additional information about "text-for-change" hotlines can be found at this website http://www.texttochange.com. This project is being done in collaboration with FACE AIDS, a nonprofit organization based out of Stanford University, dedicated to mobilizing and inspiring students to fight AIDS in Africa. FACE AIDS is lending their expertise and experience in addressing HIV/AIDS in Rwanda to this project by providing mentorship and oversight to me both at Stanford University, and through weekly meeting with their African Program Director, in Kigali, Rwanda. More information about FACE AIDS can be found at faceaids.org.

After reading about how public health radio programs have impacted the overall health and wellness of a community, I felt compelled to implement a similar program that would give the people of Rwanda, the Cyanika/Ruhengeri sectors in particular, the opportunity to learn about key child health care issues that impact their particular communities. Community leaders from Village Cyanika and Ruhengeri have expressed a desire to have eight, 30 minute broadcasts that address four critical issues in child health: child malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and child immunizations. The radio broadcast curriculum will provide the following type of information about these four health issues: overview of the health issue, preventative treatment, and how to access specific local health services/initiatives/resources. The curriculum is an adaptation of the health guides created by Hesperian Publisher, specifically using Jeff Conant’s work, A Community Guide To Environmental Health. These texts have been used to create radio scripts in the past, because they are easy to read, practical, and contain songs, stories, and useful advice about community health.

Additionally, while in Rwanda, I will be working with Frontline SMS: Medic, an organization dedicated to advancing rural healthcare networks in the developing world through the implementation and innovation of sustainable, appropriate technologies delivered through mobile phones. Frontline SMS: Medic has graciously offered to provide free software to create a “text-for-change” hotline that will send text messages with facts about HIV/AIDS to cell phones. Lucky Gunasekara, the founder of Frontline SMS: Medic, has asked that I do a differential outcomes study of the effect of cell phone technology in improving awareness of HIV/AIDS. This study will only require the addition of a few questions to the differential outcomes study that was already created to evaluate the effectiveness of the community health radio program.

In my next blogs, I will describe how and why a community health radio program can help improve health care in Rwanda, and give an update on the development of this project! Until then...