Santa Lucia Successes

After only a week of working at Santa Lucia, we are enjoying some success… The first proposal Jeremy and I have co-authored has cleared the Round 1 hurdle. We submitted the proposal last Tuesday, and on Friday, the company responded, saying they thought our project had merit. So we’re on to the next phase of the application process!

What’s the project about? Of course, it is about improving public health in Arusha. However, the way in which this project will go about improving public health – via sustainable agriculture – is rather unique. At least it’s surprising to Jeremy and me. I guess when we planned our volunteering experience in Tanzania, we thought we would spend a lot of time figuring out how to increase the public’s access to much needed medication. However, since we’ve started working here, we’ve learned that the government pays for all citizens’ HIV/AIDS medication. Therefore, from a cost perspective, there should be no barriers to access for anyone who is sick with HIV/AIDS.

However, after our first week of community visits, we have learned that St. Lucia’s patients, many of whom are struggling rural farmers, lack two fundamental things that would help them obtain their free supply of HIV/AIDS drugs more easily and consistently: transportation and food.

First, access to transportation for those living in rural villages is limited. We can verify that, as it took us nearly an hour and a half to find a bus home to Arusha after our first rural village visit. And for that hour-long drive back to the city, in which we covered a distance of no more than ten miles, we paid a whopping 1000 TShs, over three times the price of a normal bus ride. Local villagers living below the poverty line are surviving off of roughly 3000 TShs per day, so 2000 TShs in round-trip bus fare is clearly a stretch. As a result, these patients cannot travel to the city to see a doctor or garner medication. Thus, these patients often go without needed medicine for extended periods of time.

Second, a lack of food also prohibits many rural villagers from taking their medication. ARV drugs are meant to be taken with food, as a common side-effect of the drug is nausea. Our patients complain that they routinely don’t have enough to eat and feel very sick when they take their medication, so they just don’t take it. They feel that their HIV diagnosis is a death sentence, anyway. If they’re already starving, and if taking medication makes them feel even more terrible, why bother?

So Santa Lucia is embarking on a unique project in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture to provide microloans to villagers that will be used to purchase agriculture equipment and supplies. Santa Lucia will work with patients and their families to improve their farming techniques, thus generating larger yields that can be better utilized by the family, but also sold at market. With adequate food, the sick family members will be in a position to properly take the medicine they need to treat their life threatening diseases. In addition, the additional income generated from increased crop yields can be put towards bus fare to visit the doctor and obtain medicine. Of course, the income can be used in many other ways, as well.

However, at its core, the project aims to raise the standard of living for the participant families via sustainable agriculture, thus improving the families’ overall health. We thought it sounded like a stretch when we first heard about the project, but after visiting the rural villages and doing a bit of research, about similar projects sponsored by OikoCredit (who would also be the sponsor of this project), we are becoming optimistic. But we are busy! We need to complete Part Two of the application this week.  The next items on our To Do List include: Writing St. Lucia’s Business Plan (yes, it’s missing…), Writing the Project Plan, Creating a Budget and Financial Analysis for the Next Five Years, and completing a Feasibility Study.

So on top of learning a lot about public health this summer, we’re also learning the basics of microfinance… as quickly as possible! 43% of the population living in the Arumeru district of Arusha – where Santa Lucia is located – is living below the poverty line. That’s roughly 234,321 residents. Many people stand to benefit from the work, so we’ll give it our best shot!