Home > Publications and Resources > Feedback from our readers/users > Non-Governmental Organizations, Foundations, and Social Workers

Non-Governmental Organizations, Foundations, and Social Workers

Training for Parents and Evaluation of Disabilities by KOSO, Using Disabled Village Children, Kenya, 2004

[…] My name is Ben M Edward from Kenya Director for Kenya Orphans Support Organisation for the Disabled Children. Am so happy for the support you give me in our organisation. I received your books in good order and well protected, entitled, Disabled Village Children, HIV Health and Your Community.

We are very happy to say thanks alot and may God bless you to the support of others. The books are helping us to train the parents of the disabled children on how to take care of the children at home to improve the disability. We also use the books to examine and evaluate the child's disability and make sure that the parents use locally available materials to support the child in walking as well as sitting down. […]

Our organisation is doing well and children are happy as they undergo their primary level. I hope that one day you will come to Kenya and visit the rehabilitation center and see the work we are doing.

Director
KOSO
Ben M Edward

Translation of Helping Children Who Are Blind by Vidya Sagar, Tamilnadu, India, 2004

Note that Namita Jacob, who works with Vidya Sagar, was one of the authors of the English edition of Helping Children Who Are Blind.

We are proud to announce the release of our Tamil edition of "Helping children who are blind".

As with all publications of the Hesperian Foundation, their English version of the book was created with the intent of reaching parents who do not have easy or adequate access to professionals. In our field-testing of the adapted and translated book, we found that regardless of their literacy levels, parents were generally able to draw inspiration and guidance from the book. The books are being distributed free of charge throughout Tamil Nadu to families of children with visual impairments below 6 years of age.

This handbook for parents of young children with visual impairments is the result of a collaborative effort with many individuals and organizations. We want to thank you particularly for your support through our maiden attempt at adaptation and translation! We are sending you two copies-one for the office and one for Sandy.

We are attaching the foreword to the book for your perusal since it was translated into Tamil in the book.

Thanking You,

Yours sincerely,

NAMITA JACOB
Consultant-Vidya

POONAM NATARAJAN
Director

From the Foreword: This is a handbook for parents of young children specially 0-5 years with visual impairment. Our most fervent hope is that it reaches every family in need, in Tamilnadu, no matter where the family lives.

There is a general feeling among rehabilitation professionals that actually, parents do not read handbooks and handouts. Dr. Namita Jacob the author of this book and I, parent of a special child, certainly do not believe this. We know, when we work with families, both rural and urban, literate or illiterate, they are extremely keen to find out what and how they can help their disabled child.

In fact, the pre test of this book has actually proved that. We have a case of an illiterate mother, who chanced upon this book in a remote village. She took it to one of the well to do and literate women, living close by and requested her to read the book for her.

What is most amazing, is that the literate neighbour got so interested, in techniques of training visually impaired children, that after reading the book to the mother, she has also become, her greatest supporter and motivator. So the book in fact, helped the mother to find for herself, her own support system in the community.

This incident has been a great encouragement for us, and we hope many such happen as this book travels far and wide. In the pretest, this book also motivated a teacher in a mainstream school to become an advocate for blind children in her community. So lets hope for many more positive changes in the lives of our students an their families.

I have known Dr. Namita Jacob for many years now. She has been one of my most dedicated and motivated colleagues. I have learnt much from her. This book is a result of her untiring and industrious work as a teacher and rehabilitation professional.

Her greatest desire, will be fulfilled, if this book can find its way, in every home that needs it and if parents take it up, read it and enable their young children to lead fulfilled lives.

Thanking you

POONAM NATARAJAN
Director
Vidya Sagar

Use of Where There Is No Doctor in an Orphanage, Burma (Myanmar), 2003

I work with an orphanage in upper Burma (Myanmar). I travel in and out of that country on a bi-monthly base. We have 50 children who all suffer from primary TB. Recently a co-worker also working in South-East Asia gave me a gift and what a gift it is! Your book Where There Is No Doctor. [….]The part on how to determine malnutrition was […] a very great help we checked all the children by your recommended method and found all of them suffering from malnutrition. We where able to increase their food and combination of foods eaten so they will benefit and grow to be strong and healthy. Thank you for the book, it has become a treasure to me and I consult it on just about anything and it is so easy to understand.

Distribution of HIV, Health, and Your Community by the Firelight Foundation, 2003

After reviewing the first edition of HIV, Health, and Your Community: A Guide for Action, we were so impressed and excited, we sent a copy to each of our grantees. The wealth of information contained in the book is well presented, clearly explained and serves as an important reference for groups that are trying to address HIV/AIDS at the grass roots level. In an easily understandable manner, it covers a range of important and relevant topics, including basic epidemiological, transmission and testing information and realistic advice on counseling and psychosocial support needs. They also offer practical ideas for initiating grass roots programs, fundraising and proposal writing assistance and a detailed and comprehensive list of AIDS related medical concerns.

We have had nothing but positive feedback from all of our grantees — that, and requests for additional copies!

Women's Health Projects Based on Helping Health Workers Learn and the Women's Health Exchange in Nepal, 2003

Hesperian has a small grants program, the Creative Education Fund, to help groups develop grassroots women's health education projects based on Hesperian publications.

In Kailali, Nepal, the Women Development Society used a Creative Education Fund grant to adapt sections of Helping Health Workers Learn and editions of the Women's Health Exchange to develop an educational book and conduct role play, street drama, story-telling, and group discussions on a range of issues concerning women's health, and in particular, maternal and child health. Some of the successes they reported included: "Mother in law's behavior has been changed from this project. After the project they began to feed nutritious food to their daughter-in-law during pregnancy and delivery period. After project, family and husband began to take care of pregnant women for food and rest. Most pregnant women began to check up their health as well as child health at the health post or with mid wife frequently."

Where There Is No Doctor and Where Women Have No Doctor Helping Lana Community-Based Care, Suna-Migori, Kenya

It is of great joy and good hope there at the Lana community base care for receiving your reply about our letter requesting some copies of your books. I have received two books enclosed there in , the two books are Where There Is No Doctor and Where Women Have No Doctor. . . As your letter is requesting that you would like to know from us how we are using your books, they have been so much useful to us and we are trying the best of our knowledge even to assist those who can't understand English to get involved into the teaching, even though we received the books recently.

This is the way we do: we take one topic and go through it one after the other, after that we discuss about it and get various ideas from every member and pass to the entire community. We have set a meeting place whereby we give more light from the books and as well as the women's health is concerned.

Use of Where Women Have No Doctor in India, 2004

We at the Tamilnadu Science Forum and AID-India would like to thank Hesperian for the wonderful materials you have produced — particularly the book Where Women Have No Doctor. We are part of a people's movement in India and have a community health program in about 1,000 villages in Tamilnadu. We have widely used your materials for our work. We have translated your book and have also used sections of it for our local publications. We have also used it in training camps, produced several pamphlets based on it that have been widely circulated. We are now planning a series of poster exhibitions drawing on your book and are also preparing a series of two page story cards for use in our village libraries. Thank you very much for producing these wonderful books and for making them so easily accessible to groups like ours world wide.

Balaji Sampath and Kalpana

HIV, Health, and Your Community in Tanzanian AIDS-Prevention Programs, SIC, 2004

SIC is a small NGO working with local organizations to minimize the impact of the AIDS epidemic in northern Tanzania. With financial assistance from the Hesperian Foundation and the Ford Foundation, they recently completed a translation of HIV, Health, and Your Community into Kiswahili, and are distributing 8,000 copies of the translated edition in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. By special arrangement with the Tanzanian Ministry of Education, a copy of the translated edition is being placed in every public school in Tanzania.

SIC [Students for International Change] began using HIV, Health, and Your Community in June of 2003 as a resource manual for both our American student-interns and our Tanzanian teaching counterparts. Hesperian's low-literacy style means that the book is accessible to those with even basic English skills. This is especially important in countries such as Tanzania where many people do not progress beyond primary education. We have found that even those who had been put-off by the jargon-laden style of other books were able to learn quickly from HIV, Health, and Your Community. [….]

Perhaps most importantly, HIV, Health, and Your Community includes information about teaching HIV/AIDS awareness classes and initiating community interventions. Written material enjoys a high-level of credibility in Tanzanian society; an accurate book about HIV/AIDS is therefore extremely valuable in correcting the many myths that circulate about the disease. SIC believes in helping Tanzanians to plan their own community interventions, and HIV, Health, and Your Community is the perfect resource to help them do this. We know of several education programs started by Tanzanians with the help of this book. [….]

SIC has worked with many HIV teaching manuals, but never with one as clear, internationally-applicable and thoughtfully written as HIV, Health, and Your Community.

Matthew Craven
Director

Use of Hesperian Publications in Work with Children in Namibia

I want to congratulate you with those wonderful books you published. I am privileged to posess the one on Disabled Village Children. I used it in my work as a social worker over the past 7 years, with great success. From our local UNICEF library (in Windhoek, Namibia, SW Africa) I could borrow the book HIV, Health and Your Community, which was also of great assistance. Now we would very much like to have the books: Helping Health Workers Learn (which I could borrow for a little while from someone I know, but had to give back) as well as "Where There Is No Doctor" and "Where Women have no Doctor." Finances are however a problem.

I am now involved in the management of the Philadelphia Foundation for Orphans in Distress, a local charitable organisation with the aim to support communities in their effort to care for their -mainly HIV/AIDS- orphans. We teach people how to take care of the orphans, how to be self-sustainable and we give psychosocial support to the children involved and do outreaches to affected families. The Foundation is situated in the far north of the country, in the Kavango region, one of the Namibian regions where not much help and assistance is available yet, and where distances are enorm. People are still very traditional and illness is common. Health and health education services are scarce and we try to improve this. Our orphans situation mainly as a result of AIDS is heartbreaking and desperately in need of help. Grandmothers are mostly the ones caring for their grandchildren, and suffering. I read about your Gratis book program and the "Poor Country Prices", and I would very much like to know if there is a possibility for us to be part of this. I hope you can soon let us know, it would help a great lot! Thank you for your good work...

Use of Where There Is No Doctor and HIV, Health, and Your Community by the Health for All Club, Ghana, 2004

On behalf of the all members of Health for All Club, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you in particular and the Hesperian Foundation as a whole. We were actually happy when we received the copies of Where There Is No Doctor and HIV, Health, and Your Community.

The books have helped us to reduce if not eradicate the problem of access to information on HIV/AIDS and other health issues. Now we speak with boldness since we have the facts and information. The Club is also growing in numbers and have extended our activities to other nearby communities. We want to reach as many communities as possible but the problem now is means of transport. We want to get at least two bicycles for members so that our movement will be facilitated.

Once again, we thank you very much and we hope to have a frequent correspondence with you. We also need more advice from you especially on health.

Yours faithfully,
The President
(Kwaku Assah)